Oral Answers to Questions

TRANSPORT

The Secretary of State was asked—

Road Deaths

Neil Turner: What recent progress her Department has made in reducing the number of deaths and serious injuries on the roads.

Jim Fitzpatrick: Good afternoon, Mr. Speaker. The number of people killed or seriously injured on Britain's roads has fallen by 33 per cent. in the last decade and the number of children killed or seriously injured has fallen by 52 per cent. in the same period. However, there are still around 3,000 people dying, and nearly 30,000 being seriously injured, every year. Clearly, we need to continue to work hard as there is always more to be done on road safety.

Neil Turner: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. May I suggest that he looks at the regulations that prevent local authorities from putting traffic-calming measures in place on classified roads, such as City road and Frog lane in Wigan? If we can put such measures in place, we can help the Government to drive down the number of terrible accidents and serious injuries throughout the country.

Jim Fitzpatrick: My hon. Friend has a strong point to make on additional speed restrictions on urban roads. A Transport Research Laboratory study showed that in 20 mph zones accidents fell by 60 per cent., child accidents by 67 per cent., and cycling accidents by 29 per cent. We have devolved the responsibility and authority to introduce the zones to local authorities, and I know that many authorities across the country are taking advantage of those regulations.

Greg Knight: But is the Minister aware that the number of deaths on our roads could be cut by several hundred a year, and the number of serious accidents by over double that number, at a stroke if we were to abolish the ridiculous ritual whereby we put our clocks back every autumn, thus plunging the country into mid-afternoon darkness? Will the Minister have a word with the Secretary of State to see whether she can persuade the Cabinet to allow Britain to remain on British summertime throughout the year in the interests of road safety, albeit initially on a trial basis?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I seem to remember answering that question last year, when I was a junior Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry and responsible for time.  [Interruption.] Somebody has to be the Minister for time, and I'm your man. The evidence that was presented showed clearly that there was a strong split in the country between those in favour of the change and those against. The statistics on road accidents, compelling as they were, were not entirely convincing. I seem to remember that we tried the arrangements that the right hon. Gentleman suggests, as did other European states, and we all reverted to the time zones that we currently use.

Katy Clark: Motorcyclists are particularly badly represented in the figures. I understand that some 20 per cent. of casualties and serious injuries involve people on motorcycles. Will my hon. Friend outline what steps he is taking to address that problem?

Jim Fitzpatrick: As my hon. Friend suggests, motorcyclists continue to be disproportionately represented in the casualty figures. We have been working closely with representatives from the motorcycling industry and with user groups. Indeed, I have met three such groups in the past three weeks. In 2005, we published the Government's motorcycling strategy, which sets out a range of actions to make motorcycling safer, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right: 600 of the 3,000 people who were killed in the last year for which figures are available were motorcyclists, and that is just entirely wrong.

Nigel Evans: I have one of the most dangerous roads in Britain, the A59, in my area. On one part of it, where sadly there have been deaths and serious injuries, there have been calls for a roundabout, but I am told by the county council that there are insufficient funds to build it. The council has put up a lot of cones, but accidents still occur. Will the Minister please look seriously at using all the fines from speed cameras to improve road safety on some of our most dangerous roads?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman obviously knows his area well, and raises the case of a particular road. The money that is raised from speed cameras is recycled. Local authorities can spend it as they wish. There is a priority system for dealing with accident blackspots, which is used by the Highways Agency and other authorities. If he wishes to drop me a line on the issue, I will certainly get information to him on the latest position in respect of the road that he is concerned about. Obviously, where we can take action to reduce accidents on particular roads, we ought to make sure that it is taken.

Chris Ruane: May I offer a Welsh solution to an English problem? Will my hon. Friend visit my constituency and see the first-class 20 mph zone that has been created outside Rhyl high school by North Wales police and Denbighshire county council, using money from safety cameras? It is one of the most comprehensive 20 mph systems in the country, with initial warnings, secondary warnings and a camera.

Jim Fitzpatrick: As a Londoner I hate to disillusion my hon. Friend, but he is describing not a Welsh solution but a local authority solution. As I mentioned to our hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Turner) only a few moments ago, we have passed regulations to empower local authorities to do exactly what my hon. Friend's local authority has done, because it brings benefits to the whole community and in many instances improves traffic flow routes as well. We want 20 mph zones to be introduced where they are appropriate. They clearly are effective. They cut accident rates, which means that we can protect our communities and particularly our children. I would encourage every local authority to engage with its community and see whether they are relevant for them.

Robert Goodwill: The encouraging headlines belie a grim statistical trend. One in six deaths on the roads are associated with drink driving. That has increased from 460 in 1998 to 540 last year. Does the Minister think that by presiding over a reduction in traffic police numbers and not making drink driving a key performance indicator for police forces, the Government are sending out all the wrong messages and contributing to the problem, not to the solution?

Jim Fitzpatrick: The hon. Gentleman raised that very point in Westminster Hall last week and we had an interesting discussion. I was able to reassure him that after our recent efforts to campaign against drink driving, there were more breathalyser tests in recent times. We liaise closely with our colleagues in the Home Office to make sure that enforcement is as high up their agenda as it is on ours. The hon. Gentleman says that one in six fatalities are caused by drink driving. In one in three fatalities, speed is a contributory factor. I am not in any way minimising that. We must take into account all the reasons why fatalities occur. There are far too many, and we both agree that as a Parliament we want to be seen to be doing all we can to encourage better driving on our roads.

Ann Coffey: The latest figures show that there has been a 37 per cent. decline in the number of fatal and serious child casualties in Stockport. There is still more work to be done, but will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the work of the local road safety officers and the many initiatives that they are pursuing, including their valuable preventive work in schools?

Jim Fitzpatrick: I am happy to join my hon. Friend in commending the activities of the officers of her local authority. As I have mentioned in the past few answers, 20 mph zones and action at local level by local authorities can save lives. All of us in the House would encourage that.

Peterborough Station

Stewart Jackson: If she will make a statement on the proposed upgrading of Peterborough railway station.

Tom Harris: National Express East Coast Ltd has been awarded the franchise to run the east coast main line rail service from 9 December 2007. Its plans for Peterborough include additional car parking spaces, cycle storage, passenger information equipment and a refurbishment of facilities.

Stewart Jackson: The Minister will know that the redevelopment of Peterborough railway station is vital to the regeneration of the city centre in Peterborough. Will he give an undertaking that he will prevail upon Network Rail to work speedily and closely with key stakeholders in Peterborough, including Peterborough city council, Opportunity Peterborough and other private developers, to ensure that we have a 21st century railway station not too long into the 21st century?

Tom Harris: The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. His concerns for his railway station and the economic driver that it can be for his community is echoed by many Members of the House. Network Rail's proposals for Peterborough station are entirely a matter for him and Network Rail's private sector partners. However, I would be more than happy to convey to Network Rail the hon. Gentleman's concerns that that work should be progressed early.

Heathrow (Security Delays)

Ann Widdecombe: If she will make a statement on delays caused by security procedures at Heathrow airport.

Ruth Kelly: It is paramount that the UK's aviation security regime is properly enforced. It is also clearly important that passengers are not unnecessarily inconvenienced by security measures. At Heathrow, as at all other airports, the Government are working closely with the industry to ensure that both objectives are fully considered.

Ann Widdecombe: Given that we have seen another summer of long queues, and that the Airport Operators Association says that the queues are too long, too intrusive and that good will has been lost on the part of passengers, does the Minister accept that it is now time for some sense and proportionality? By my nail scissors, there are none at the moment.

Ruth Kelly: I am delighted that the right hon. Lady is in her place asking questions; I am only disappointed that she has already declared her intention not to stand at the next general election. The whole House would agree that we will be the poorer for that.
	The right hon. Lady referred to delays in security queues at Heathrow, but I make no apology for the fact that we need robust security measures to counter a real and serious security threat. I accept, of course, that at times there are delays and inconvenience for passengers, but we should bear in mind the facts: despite some of the news coverage, queues in central search areas are routinely running at less than 10 minutes for 95 per cent. of the time. However, if we can make sure that a robust security regime remains in place, I am determined that we should make progress on the issue. That is why earlier this year, in the summer, I convened an airline and airport operators security summit and why we have set up a working group to see what improvements can be made.

Denis MacShane: I have been going through Heathrow and Gatwick a few times in recent months on my journeys to Europe. On the way out, I have never had to wait more than 10 minutes between check-in and buying a book in Borders. On the other hand, on the way back there have been intolerable third-world queues at immigration. That is not my right hon. Friend's responsibility, but will she have a word with the Home Office? Seeing the businessmen of the world queuing up to enter Britain, as if they were in some third-world country, is shaming and not a good advertisement for a modern UK.

Ruth Kelly: My right hon. Friend is a seasoned traveller and well used to dealing with some of the inconvenience that there clearly is for passengers at Heathrow. As he says, such matters are rightly for the Home Secretary, who takes a close interest in border control. I understand that there are more front-line border officers than ever before; their being there doing that important job is preventing thousands of illegal immigrants from entering the UK every year. The Home Secretary keeps such issues under review and will take action if that is required.

Patrick Cormack: Does the Secretary of State accept that robust security is one thing—we all support that—but unintelligent security brings security into disrepute? Will she look again at some of the knee-jerk regulations brought in last year in the wake of the scare? I do not want my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) to lose any more nail scissors.

Ruth Kelly: Despite my respect for the hon. Gentleman, I do not recognise his characterisation of the situation at all. The one-bag rule was introduced for extremely good reasons—there was a serious, real and ongoing threat to our national security. The UK restriction was intended to limit the number of X-rays per passenger. There was a clear choice: introduce the one-bag rule or stop planes flying altogether.
	We keep such issues constantly under review, of course. I am absolutely clear that if we can make progress, we should; I am determined to work with the industry to see what alternatives are possible. However, let me be clear to the House: before sanctioning any change, I will have to be satisfied that it would not have an adverse impact on security.

Brian H Donohoe: Like me, Mr. Speaker, you are a regular traveller on planes, as you come from Scotland on a weekly basis. The experiences of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) are nothing like ours; we have to wait for up to three quarters of an hour to go through security at Heathrow. It is a joke. It is down to the inconsistencies; we have to deal daily with bad management at that airport. However, I have an answer for you, Mr. Speaker. You should use London City airport, where security is far better, airline services are of a far higher standard and people do not lose their bags as they do at Heathrow every time they travel.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The aeroplane into London City airport leaves from Edinburgh; I prefer Glasgow.

Ruth Kelly: I certainly sympathise with my hon. Friend, but we need to be clear about the fundamentals of what is happening at Heathrow, which is the world's busiest and most congested international airport and is operating way beyond its capacity. For example, I understand that its runways are operating at about 98.5 per cent. capacity, which reduces resilience and leads to delay.
	As a Government, we have a clear response to that—we need to build more capacity. In the short term, terminal 5 is coming on stream, and in the medium term there will be the new terminal to replace terminals 1 and 2. In the longer term, the Government's policy is that we need new runway capacity at Heathrow—consistent, of course, with local and environmental constraints, as set out in the 2003 White Paper. I look forward to hearing what the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs. Villiers) says about that.

Theresa Villiers: I think the Secretary of State's answers show that she has spent too much time in the VIP lounge and not enough time with real passengers. The CBI has warned that Heathrow hassle is an increasing threat to inward investment in the UK.  Chicago Tribune readers voted the airport the worst in the world, and anyone who has travelled knows what a deeply unpleasant experience it can be. When is the Secretary of State going to start knocking heads together to get something done to improve the quality of service at an airport that is rapidly becoming a national embarrassment? We think that passengers deserve better.

Ruth Kelly: Actually, I think that passengers deserve better. That is why the Government have the very clear policy position that if the local environmental conditions are met we should have a third runway, which would preserve Heathrow's place as a premier international airport. The hon. Lady, however, seems to be torn from pillar to post. On the one hand, she is being advised by her one of her right hon. Friends that yes, we need more capacity at Heathrow; on the other, she is being advised by another right hon. Friend that we do not need any increase in capacity at all. Which will she do?

Theresa Villiers: The Secretary of State cannot wash her hands of responsibility for the state of Heathrow today. The Government are part of the problem, when they should be part of the solution. Why do they think that 45-minute waiting times at immigration are acceptable? Do they not recognise that long queues are in themselves targets and security risks? Will they admit that their one-bag rule, which the Secretary of State defended again today, is not in place to preserve safety but because of inefficiency? Why do we have to put up with the one-bag rule in this country when no other country in the world does?

Ruth Kelly: There is a very clear answer to this: we have a more serious threat than other European countries do. The EU sets minimum standards which we have decided to exceed in order to limit the number of X-rays per passenger. That is for very serious reasons: we want to protect the public. If the hon. Lady is saying that I should lift the one-bag rule without regard to the security consequences, that is a totally irresponsible position. Of course we need to do better, and we keep these issues under review. Earlier in the summer, I convened a summit with the airport and airline operators. We have set up a working group to examine what progress can be made. I am optimistic that we will shortly be in a position to make progress, but first and foremost must be the security requirements of people in this country.

Jim Sheridan: My right hon. Friend will be aware that part of the reason for long queues at Heathrow and throughout UK airports is the personal searches that take place of passengers by security staff, which are, I have to say, particularly intimate and intrusive. Will she work with the airport authorities to find some form of technology that could also be used in other countries to make these searches less intrusive?

Ruth Kelly: My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the potential of better and more sophisticated technology. Indeed, at Heathrow, as in Glasgow, we are trialling sophisticated security screening technology and more sophisticated X-ray technology that may reduce the need for some of the intimate hand searches and may also lead us to a situation in which we can consider changing the restrictions that are currently in place. However, as I have already said, the first priority must be preserving and maintaining the security of the travelling public. Provided that we do that, I clearly want to make progress to improve the passenger experience.

Airedale and Wharfedale Lines

Philip Davies: Whether she plans to provide extra carriages on the Airedale and Wharfedale lines.

Tom Harris: Earlier this year, the Department supported capacity improvements which have maintained longer trains on the Airedale and Wharfedale lines. In addition, the rail White Paper published in July set out the Government's intention of buying a capacity increase of 53 per cent. for peak hour commuter trains serving Leeds between now and 2014.

Philip Davies: Although I welcome the extra carriages promised by the Minister, lines are overcrowded now. Providing carriages many years in the future is not good enough; we need them now. Will he tell me how many of those extra carriages will be on the Airedale and Wharfedale lines, and what work will be done to ensure that infrastructure is in place to cope with extra carriages, such as longer platforms?

Tom Harris: The hon. Gentleman should be careful when listening to the propaganda put out by his Front Benchers. The spending commitments in the White Paper that was published in July included a commitment to 1,300 new carriages. Those carriages will be rolled out throughout the network from next year, not 2014 as suggested by his Front-Bench spokesmen. Network Rail's strategic business plan, due at the end of October, will tell us where capacity will best be provided, and a final decision on the allocation of all the carriages will be made at the beginning of the new year.

Paul Truswell: Does my hon. Friend accept, however, that the Airedale and Wharfedale lines are victims of their own success? We have refurbished stations such as that at Guiseley, new rolling stock that replaces 40-year-old, slam-door cast-offs inherited from the last Government, and ever increasing numbers of passengers. Does he recognise that in order to overcome major problems with overcrowding we desperately need extra capacity, and extra car parking provision at stations such as Guiseley to reduce the pressure on surrounding neighbourhoods?

Tom Harris: My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Being a Minister with responsibility for rail at this point in the history of railway services is a privilege because the problem that I have to deal with is one of inexorably rising rail patronage. Under the last Conservative Government, however, particularly in 1982, a record low number of passengers were using the network. In the past 10 years there has been a 45 per cent. increase in patronage, which is in no small part down to the role the Government have played in investing in the rail industry, and in ensuring that our economy encourages record numbers of passengers to use the rail industry to get to jobs that did not exist under the Tories.

Susan Kramer: As the Minister will know, the Airedale and Wharfedale lines, and the other local Leeds lines, need something like 100 additional carriages, and that need is evident throughout the country. Would he please clarify where the 1,300 promised carriages will go? If they are to be delivered early next year, have they already been ordered? What impact will there be on disputes over the future of rolling stock leasing companies? What will the timing be, and when will local lines know about it, so that they are in a position to plan? When can passengers look forward to having a small chance of finding a seat?

Tom Harris: If I have inadvertently misled the hon. Lady about the delivery time scale for the 1,300 new carriages, I apologise. I said that a rolling stock plan would be finalised early in the new year. The 1,300 new carriages will be delivered between next year and 2014. She will be disappointed if she expects major changes to the structure of the industry as far as the rolling stock companies are concerned. I believe that the current structure of the industry is fit for purpose and that the rolling stock companies are doing what they intended to do, so I do not envisage any change to that structure. Through the current industry structure, we can guarantee those 1,300 carriages—an increase of more than 10 per cent. on the current level of rolling stock on the railways. That is the biggest single step change increase in capacity for the rail industry since the end of the second world war.

Train Overcrowding

Bob Spink: What her policy is for reducing train overcrowding.

Ruth Kelly: The rail White Paper was published in July. It sets out the resources we intend to make available to the rail industry and the increases in capacity, as well as safety and performance, that we expect the industry to deliver in return. In addition to this, we have given the green light to Crossrail to relieve congestion on both rail and underground networks.

Bob Spink: I am grateful for that answer, and the decision on Crossrail is particularly welcome. The c2c train operator on the Fenchurch Street line has done an excellent job. It is one of the best performing in the country and has improved reliability while keeping down ticket costs. However, overcrowding on that line is unacceptable and unsafe. My constituents who try to get on those trains at Benfleet station have difficulty finding seats. What will the right hon. Lady do to encourage further investment so that we can get more rolling stock, and will she support my campaign for an additional terminus station at Canvey Island?

Ruth Kelly: First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his generous remarks about Crossrail, which is a historic achievement under this Government. I understand his concerns about overcrowding—it is precisely for that reason that we are making the investment in capacity that the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, South (Mr. Harris), has just outlined.
	I also understand the hon. Gentleman's desire for his constituents to benefit from Benfleet and Canvey Island. I know that c2c, a good operator, is already examining options for ways in which it might increase capacity on those routes.
	The hon. Gentleman campaigns for a new station on Canvey Island; I understand that that is an expensive route to take. However, as he knows, if he comes up with a robust business case, with improved and significant private sector investment and a high level of benefits to cost, the Government will consider it.

Eric Martlew: I am sure that my right hon. Friend knows about overcrowding on the west coast main line. The train on which I travelled yesterday from Carlisle was horrendously overcrowded because of the cancellation of an earlier train. However, overcrowding is a day-to-day problem on the west coast main line. I do not understand why Virgin Trains proposes to run a train from London to Glasgow with only one stop at Preston, missing out Carlisle. That will put extra pressure on the other trains in the area in order to reduce the time by only three minutes. Will my right hon. Friend ask the Minister responsible for rail to meet me to discuss the matter before the timetable is agreed?

Ruth Kelly: I shall certainly ask my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for rail to meet my hon. Friend—I should be delighted to do so. I am sure that he welcomes the £7 billion investment in the west coast main line upgrade. It has transformed the prospects for the route and means that far fewer people now choose to fly between London and Manchester but instead, like me, take the train. Of course, problems with overcrowding remain. They will be taken into account in any forthcoming spending plans. However, my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for rail assures me that, given that the timetable is not yet finalised, he is happy to have discussions with my hon. Friend.

Michael Fabricant: The right hon. Lady will know that congestion on the west coast main line is partly due to the fact that the trains have nine carriages. That is an increase of one on the original plan, which was for eight carriages. Negotiations are going on about providing a further two carriages to make 11 in all. However, Virgin Trains asks what profit is in that for the company if its franchise is to last only a short time. Will the Secretary of State look at the matter afresh and realise that if Virgin Trains is to provide two extra carriages per train at its expense, it needs a longer franchise period?

Ruth Kelly: The hon. Gentleman will understand that such negotiations are never easy and that train-operating companies often come to the Department with requests for extensions to their franchises. He should consider the specific request that he mentioned in that spirit. My hon. Friend the Minister responsible for rail assures me that he is optimistic that a deal about the extra carriages will be done. The west coast main line will benefit from greater train frequencies and more rolling stock as we deliver the single biggest increase in investment since the war.

Celia Barlow: Does my right hon. Friend realise that, on the overcrowded Hove to London line, Network Rail is about to remove the trees from the cuttings? Is she or a member of her ministerial team willing to come and speak to representatives of my constituency, of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers and experts from the university of Sussex, who are worried that the risk of landslip on that crowded line is greater than any danger posed by leaves on lines?

Ruth Kelly: I appreciate the fact that my hon. Friend champions the concerns of her constituents. I understand that a meeting is already in the diary for tomorrow, when she will meet my hon. Friend the Minister responsible for rail. I am sure that she will use that opportunity to discuss those issues and ensure that the best solution is reached.

Buses (Antisocial Behaviour)

Anne Milton: If she will make a statement on levels of antisocial behaviour on buses.

Rosie Winterton: The 2004-05 British crime survey showed that around 1 per cent. of regular bus users had been a victim of a crime or antisocial behaviour on a bus. However, any level is too high and we continue to work with operators, local government, trade unions and other agencies to tackle the issue.

Anne Milton: Does the Minister agree that the issue is not just about crime? For many people, buses are becoming no-go zones. I was at the launch of the Surrey coalition for disabled people, a group that, among others, has raised with me the fact that buses can feel hostile and unpleasant. There is no point in extending free access to public transport, particularly buses, if people do not feel safe to travel on it. Does the Minister agree that it is a matter of discipline, respect and civil behaviour?

Rosie Winterton: The hon. Lady is right that we must do all that we can to ensure that travelling by bus becomes the first choice, rather than the last resort. As I have said, the percentage of people who have been a victim of crime or antisocial behaviour is quite small. However, it is important that we continue, for example, to install CCTV. In London, every bus has around six cameras, to ensure that the police can take up issues where they are reported, while there are 360 extra police officers in London dealing with antisocial behaviour on buses. In the hon. Lady's constituency, the safer Guildford partnership is looking at a number of issues, including how to make travelling on public transport safer. There is also the STOP—safer travel on buses and coaches panel—campaign, which is looking at what else we can do to overcome any problems that arise.

Tony Lloyd: My right hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the fact that the number of attacks on buses is quite small, but that does not stop the public having a genuine apprehension, particularly on late-night services. Is not one solution to bring back the bus conductor, even though that would be at a cost to the bus operators?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. However, we should remember that the role of bus conductors was to allow passengers to buy their tickets, not to act as security guards. We should also remember that when conductors were employed in London they were the most assaulted members of staff, so reintroducing them is not the answer. However, it is important that we should continue to look at what further measures we can take, such as installing CCTV cameras, and ensuring that people report incidents to the police and that the police can follow them up. In that way, we can ensure greater safety.

Khalid Mahmood: Is my right hon. Friend aware of a survey conducted by the  Birmingham Mail into bus use by passengers in Birmingham, which found a considerable increase in antisocial behaviour where the Tory-Lib Dem council had cut down on routes? Will she point out to the council that its duty is to increase passenger usage, not decrease it?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend makes an important point about the role of local authorities in encouraging bus use. One of the things that we are doing through the draft local transport Bill is giving local authorities greater powers, which will make it easier to introduce quality partnerships, for instance, and if necessary, to introduce quality contracts, to ensure that local authorities provide the local transport that local people want, particularly bus services.

Clive Efford: Does my right hon. Friend agree that when people mention antisocial behaviour on buses they are generally referring to young people, particularly in London, where they enjoy concessionary fares? Although there is no excusing antisocial behaviour wherever it occurs, does she agree that we should avoid demonising young people, because that might result in our restricting access to certain services to which they are entitled like everybody else?

Rosie Winterton: My hon. Friend makes the extremely important point that we should not demonise young people. He might have heard some comments recently about the "scourge" of
	"some obstreperous kids...abusing the privilege of free travel"
	and using buses as
	"glorified getaway cars for their criminal escapades".
	I am afraid that those remarks were made by the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson). I hope that that does not mean that the Opposition are now backing, as the hon. Gentleman seems to be doing, the withdrawing of—

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Transport Expenditure (Yorkshire)

Greg Mulholland: If she will make a statement on levels of transport spending in Yorkshire.

Rosie Winterton: The Department for Transport's spending on transport services—road and rail—has increased by 77 per cent. over the six years to 2007-08 in the Yorkshire and the Humber region, up from £330 million in 2001-02 to £590 million in 2007-08.

Greg Mulholland: I thank the Minister for her answer, but will she tell the people of Yorkshire just how long they can expect to be rooted at the foot of the league table for her Department's transport spending? Will she also tell the people of Leeds why £350 million to transform transport in Leeds has been deemed too expensive, even though it fulfils the criteria set out by the Department, but £16 billion on the Crossrail system in the south-east is deemed good value for money?

Rosie Winterton: Something like £1 million a day is being spent to support Northern Rail. As I said, local transport funding for road and rail in Yorkshire and the Humber has increased by 77 per cent., and local transport funding itself has doubled in the past seven years. It has increased from £75 million in 2001 to £156 million in 2007-08, while £250 million of investment has come through the TransPennine Express franchise. The hon. Gentleman needs to remember that it can be difficult to make comparisons between the spending per head in the different regions, because of the amount that might already have been spent on big strategic road networks or on rail. Overall local transport funding in Yorkshire and the Humber has doubled, and the spending on roads and rail has increased by 77 per cent. I would like to know whether the hon. Gentleman feels that Lib Dem policies would produce that kind of—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Those are not matters for the Minister.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

The  Minister for the Cabinet Office and  Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was asked—

Social Exclusion

Jim Devine: Whether the public service agreement for social exclusion is intended to improve access to employment for the most socially excluded adults.

Gillian Merron: Helping more of the most excluded adults to obtain a job as well as a home is a key priority across government through the socially excluded adults public service agreement.

Jim Devine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that answer. There is a particular difficulty with people who have chronic psychiatric problems. Will she tell the House what action she is taking to get those individuals back into the workplace and to educate employers about the benefits of employing those people?

Gillian Merron: My hon. Friend has a long track record of speaking up for that group of people, and I share his view that a home and a job are an important part of getting them back on track. I can offer him some good news. Through pathways to work, we are giving people assistance to manage their condition. We are also helping them through the increasingly successful local employment partnerships, involving more than 100 companies such as M&S, Sainsbury's and Tesco, which want to see such individuals skilled and ready to work and are prepared to offer them work. In addition, there is the recently announced jobs pledge, through which we will work closely with employers to get about 250,000 of the most disadvantaged people into work.

Francis Maude: The Minister will be aware that, since 1997, the number of people living in severe poverty has increased by 600,000, that working-age poverty has increased and that the number of young people not in work or full-time education has risen by 20 per cent. Perhaps we should therefore not be surprised that, last week, the Government decided not to publish their usual annual Opportunity for All report. Instead, they simply slipped out the bare indicators on the Department for Work and Pensions website with as little fanfare as possible. Was last Thursday thought to be a particularly good day to bury bad news?

Gillian Merron: The figures have been published and they are on the website, which is open and available to everyone. I do not recognise the position that the right hon. Gentleman describes. We have more people in work and in decent homes than ever before; we have lifted 600,000 children out of poverty; and we have seen major increases in income and educational achievement. The whole point about the public service agreement is that it is a Government commitment to go even further.

Anne Moffat: Does my hon. Friend agree that people who suffer from epilepsy are particularly discriminated against in the workplace? Anything that we can do to help people suffering from that dreadful illness would be gratefully received.

Gillian Merron: I share my hon. Friend's concern. I would like to emphasise something that I know my hon. Friend supports: we are working closely with employers through a particular programme to overcome the stigma that exists and to encourage understanding of such conditions.

Stephen Ladyman: Is my hon. Friend aware that people with learning disabilities and those on the autistic spectrum are often the most excluded from employment, yet when they get into the right work, they can be the most loyal and most effective of workers? What more can we do to help that group of people to identify the right employment opportunities and get into work?

Gillian Merron: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is true that those who have been most excluded sometimes have a lot to offer. The challenge for us is not primarily about job opportunities—on any given day, there are some 660,000 vacancies—but the fact that we need to raise the game in skills, training and support that can be tailored to individuals such as those identified by my hon. Friend.

Third Sector

Anne McIntosh: What his policy objectives are in relation to the third sector; and if he will make a statement.

Edward Miliband: The third sector review published in July set out a vision for how the Government can work in partnership with the sector to support its work in four key areas: building stronger communities, transforming public services, creating social enterprise and speaking up for the people they represent. The office of the third sector is financing that with over £500 million of investment and by working with Government Departments to make it happen.

Anne McIntosh: I am grateful for that answer, but I do not know whether it amounts to policy objectives. I hope that the Minister will join me in congratulating many in the voluntary sector on whom the Government are completely dependent, particularly in respect of delivering their care programme. I am thinking of the Leonard Cheshire homes in my constituency, which do a fantastic job for disabled young people. Will the Minister promise that the Government will not stand in the way of the voluntary sector, but work with it to enable it to continue to deliver the excellent work that it does?

Edward Miliband: I definitely join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to the work of Leonard Cheshire all around the country as well as in her constituency. The third sector review, which has been widely welcomed, including by Leonard Cheshire, is aimed precisely at creating the right environment for the third sector, in recognition of the inspiration that it provides. The Government can help the third sector by providing the right conditions, having the right funding in place and, in particular, providing stability of funding, which is crucial for organisations around the country.

Andrew Slaughter: My right hon. Friend will know from his visits to Hammersmith and Fulham that we have a very active third sector, as I was reminded last Friday when I visited our volunteer centre. Under the energetic leadership of Marion Schumann, it is now the biggest in London. What can my right hon. Friend do, however, about the local Tory council? From 1 October it has imposed swingeing cuts on advice to the black, minority and ethnic sector, and from next April it promises cuts in the voluntary sector of up to 26 per cent.

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend makes his point in a very eloquent way. I very much enjoyed an Adjournment debate a few months back in which we discussed the situation in Hammersmith and Fulham. The Government can do some things and we are strengthening the framework for local government so that it has better relations with the third sector. The truth is, however, that the ultimate sanction is to vote them out.

Henry Bellingham: How much lottery money will be diverted from the third sector towards the 2012 Olympics?

Edward Miliband: The Big Lottery Fund is the primary source of funding for third sector organisations. They campaigned to protect it, and we are protecting all the money going to that sector. The Big Lottery Fund has made that clear and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will welcome it.

Andrew Gwynne: The third sector in Tameside in Stockport is increasingly taking over responsibility for providing public services, often using one-off grants or other forms of external funding. What efforts are being made to ensure that sustainable funding regimes are put in place for such organisations, so that community groups can plan with more certainty for the future?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend makes an important point about what happens to third sector organisations. I had the privilege of visiting third sector organisations in Stockport, his neighbouring constituency, where I saw their good work. It is precisely through new objectives that measure the performance of local government in relation to third sector organisations that we hope to make a difference to the stability of funding provided.

John Bercow: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will salute and champion the role of the third sector in the delivery of aid to some of the poorest and most disadvantaged children on the planet. This is not a request for public funding: will the Minister simply pay tribute to the extremely important work undertaken by the Schools for Africa project, which is engaged in mobilising the enthusiasm and voluntary initiative of thousands of schoolchildren across the country, in enabling the provision of decent-quality books and equipment to children in the developing world whose opportunities are few and far between?

Edward Miliband: Let me pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for his long-standing championing of the need for the right amounts of overseas development assistance. I think that he would join me in suggesting that it is extremely good that we are on the way to the 0.7 per cent. target, which is an extraordinary achievement for this country. I also want to pay tribute to the voluntary work done to support aid organisations. The non-governmental organisation overseas aid sector distinguishes itself by speaking up for changes in the law and policy, and by campaigning in relation to the developing world, and we also very much want to protect that.

Tom Levitt: My right hon. Friend might not be aware that I was on the management committee of my local citizens advice bureau in the early 1990s, when the CAB and other organisations were condemned by Conservative Ministers for behaving in ways that were deemed to be political. There was an assumption that those organisations could not campaign to get the law changed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that was political correctness gone mad? Does he also agree that this Government's policy towards the third sector should involve no such restriction on campaigning?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend has a distinguished record in championing the rights of the third sector. I did not know about his history of involvement in his local CAB, but he makes a profoundly important point. We had an illuminating debate on the matter last Thursday. While the third sector review champions the right of voluntary organisations to speak up, campaign, draw on their experience and say how they want policy to change, it is becoming increasingly clear to third sector organisations around the country that the Conservative party has great doubts about that.

Norman Baker: The Minister has correctly said that the growth of the third sector, which is welcome, must not replace adequate funding of public services by Government. At the Lewes Victoria hospital in my constituency, however, the league of friends increasingly spends money not on fripperies but on essential medical equipment. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that the third sector does not engage in work that the public sector should do, and that we do not effectively have postcode funding based on the strength of the third sector?

Edward Miliband: I do not know about the local example raised by the hon. Gentleman. I point out to him, however, that the health service budget has increased in the past 10 years from about £30 billion to more than £100 billion. Historically, volunteers have played an important role in relation to the health service, without, as far as possible, substituting for what paid members of staff do. At a local London hospital I had the privilege of meeting volunteers who add to what paid staff can do, and I agree with him that that must be the objective.

Greg Clark: In the third sector review published in July the Government stated that they could
	"see no objection—legal or other—to a charity pursuing"
	its purposes
	"wholly or mainly through political activities".
	In last Thursday's debate I asked the Minister if it was his view that a charity should be allowed to devote 100 per cent. of its resources to campaigning politically, to which he replied:
	"No, that is not my view."—[ Official Report, 18 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 989.]
	Will the Minister therefore clarify what is the view of the Government? Should a charity be allowed to pursue its purposes wholly through political activities—yes or no?

Edward Miliband: In this we are guided by the Charity Commission. If the hon. Gentleman had done his homework, he would have read the April 2007 Charity Commission document on the matter. Question 11 asks about a small charity that might for a temporary period devote all its resources to campaigning. The Charity Commission view is that that is all right, and that is my view, too. However, it goes on to say that if in the long term that becomes the sole activity of an organisation, then that is not acceptable. It is becoming increasingly clear that while we want to protect the independent voice of charities, the Opposition want to go back to the 1980s—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Taylor.

David Taylor: If the voluntary sector is to be more successful in bidding for public services, is it not the case that it must improve its bidding, its marketing of itself and demonstrate its track record, and also that it must have more robust forms of governance and clearer lines of accountability to its stakeholders? What are the Government doing to enable it to capacity build in those regards, so that it can have a better track record in winning public service contracts?

Edward Miliband: Again, my hon. Friend makes an important point. The investment that we are making through Capacitybuilders in this spending review is precisely about building up the capacity of third sector organisations, so that they have the skills to be able to supply public services and fulfil contracts. Also, the Futurebuilders programme is investing in public services. The third sector accepts its responsibility to demonstrate the accountability my hon. Friend talks about, and to have the necessary skills and expertise.

Nicholas Winterton: Is the Minister not aware that the voluntary sector in this country is often assisted financially by local authorities, and that that is money well spent? Is he not further aware that many local authorities—not least Cheshire county council and Macclesfield borough council in my constituency—are under-resourced and do not have the opportunity or ability to help voluntary organisations such as the Crossroads association in Macclesfield, of which I am patron? They want to do more, but they do not have the money. Will the Government ensure that local authorities are adequately resourced?

Edward Miliband: The hon. Gentleman is a long-serving and distinguished Member of this House, but it sounds as if he is making a request that goes beyond my remit: that we should spend a lot more public money on local authorities. I shall pass on his thoughts to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but I point out to him that how much local authorities prioritise the work that they do with the third sector is a matter for their discretion. Many local authorities have a distinguished record, and I urge others to follow their example.

Community Organisations

Celia Barlow: What plans he has to support the work of small community organisations.

Rosie Cooper: What steps he is taking to support the work of small community organisations.

Phil Hope: Small community organisations are an essential part of a strong local voluntary sector—indeed, they are a key part of a strong and thriving community—and support for their work is a Government priority. The office of the third sector has created the £30 million community assets fund, which will help community groups to take on the ownership and management of assets. It is also introducing a new £80 million programme of small grants for small community and voluntary organisations and a £50 million programme of endowment grants to help local foundations to provide an enduring source of funding.

Celia Barlow: I thank my hon. Friend for his answer. In Hove and Portslade in my constituency, the Sussex multiple sclerosis treatment centre, a charitable organisation set up and run entirely by MS sufferers, was charged VAT on its building work to enlarge its centre. We were eventually able to get the VAT written off, but does my hon. Friend agree that it would be of particular benefit to all charitable organisations if there was VAT exemption for such third sector organisations?

Phil Hope: I congratulate my hon. Friend on achieving the write-off. In any application for a local authority grant to pay for refurbishment or repairs, third sector organisations are very much encouraged to include the costs of VAT, so that every such organisation gets the full cost recovery from grants of that kind. On the wider question, there is a generous package of tax relief and tax exemptions for charities, but broader questions about VAT are a matter for the Treasury. I shall bring her point to the attention of my Treasury colleagues.

Rosie Cooper: Areas in my constituency rank in the top 10 per cent. of deprived communities. Last Friday, I discussed one particular project that is seeking funding both to develop volunteers to help others and to help alleviate deprivation in Skelmersdale by increasing access to advice and skills by way of information and communications technology facilities. How will the Government's investment in the third sector help such organisations?

Phil Hope: I congratulate my hon. Friend on her excellent work as a champion of voluntary organisations in her constituency. Through Capacitybuilders, the Government are providing some £85 million-worth of investment over the next three years to local and national organisations to give advice and support, including on administration and skills, on making use of computers and on the internet. I would recommend that as a first step the organisation that she mentions goes to the Capacitybuilders website or contacts its main switchboard. We can provide her with the details about that. Many local authorities and businesses often provide surplus computers and equipment to voluntary organisations, and she might like to pursue that avenue too.

John Leech: Will the Minister join me in condemning Manchester city council's decision to undermine local community groups by choosing to increase rent massively on its buildings?

Phil Hope: I am afraid that it is not my position to condemn one council or another. This Government have made it clear to local authorities that we expect them to provide sustainable, long-term, three-year funding in compliance with the Compact, which applies across the country. They should also ensure, as part of the local government performance framework, that local third sector organisations thrive in every local area across this country in line with this Government's objective of ensuring that we have a modern, 21st-century third sector that delivers, and stands up and campaigns for the needs of people in communities.

Voluntary Sector

Andrew MacKay: If he will make a statement on the role of voluntary sector organisations in the delivery of public services.

Edward Miliband: Voluntary organisations have an important role to play in the design, development and delivery of public services. That is why in areas such as child care provision, recycling and employment services we are promoting the sector's role. Third sector delivery will not be used by this Government as a cut-price alternative to properly funded public services.

Andrew MacKay: While the Minister's words are fine, in practice very little is happening. Does he understand why the voluntary sector is so disappointed that it is not being included more in delivery in the public sector?

Edward Miliband: I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman, because lots is happening. If one looks around the country at the different services provided by the voluntary sector, from recycling to pathways to work, the offender management service to child care provision, one sees that in a whole host of different areas the third sector is increasingly playing a role in public services. There is further to go and we want to encourage it.

Mr. Speaker: Before I call the statement, may I say that a practice has come in that hon. Members are reading supplementary questions? I am not going to single out any hon. Member, but they should hear what the Minister has to say and respond accordingly. Questions should not be prepared beforehand. We are well into this Parliament, and the practice should not continue.

Scottish Elections 2007

Des Browne: I would like to welcome the publication of the Electoral Commission report into the conduct of the May 2007 elections. Earlier today, Mr. Gould, the head of the commission's independent review team, launched the report at a press conference in Edinburgh. The House will appreciate that I am not in a position at present to give a definitive response to all the recommendations or options that touch on the Secretary of State for Scotland's responsibilities for the elections to the Scottish Parliament. As is standard with these reports, I will of course respond formally in writing in due course.
	In May, my predecessor, the Secretary of State for International Development, my right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, South (Mr. Alexander), made a commitment that the Government would update this House in the light of the publication of Mr. Gould's report. In making this statement today, I am honouring that commitment.
	In the main, I believe that the report is a valuable contribution to the analysis of what went wrong in administrative terms in the period leading up to and including the night of count for the May elections. I do not agree with every aspect of Mr. Gould's analysis and I shall explain that in more detail shortly. But my one main message for the House today is that it is my principal objective to ensure that, in the interests of the voter, we will never again face the problems we saw on 3 May.
	Mr. Gould's report offers several recommendations about how to achieve that objective. Importantly, he recommends that elections to the Scottish Parliament and to local government in Scotland be decoupled and no longer held on the same day, and it is my understanding that the Scottish Executive had signalled at an earlier stage their intention to look seriously at that.
	A positive decision on decoupling would, I think, be welcome, but none the less I am here today to tell the House that I can accept a number of the core recommendations in the report. First, Mr. Gould recommends that electronic counting should in future be restricted to local government elections, and I am happy to accept today that electronic counting will not be required for separate Scottish parliamentary polls. Secondly, on ballot paper design, Mr. Gould proposes that we should revert to two separate ballot papers: one for the regional vote and one for the constituency. Although I may not agree with all Mr. Gould's reasoning in reaching that recommendation, I see advantage in reverting to the two-page arrangements for future Scottish parliamentary polls and so I accept that recommendation. Thirdly, the report proposes a longer period between close of nominations and polling day, and I am minded to accept that proposal. Fourthly, Mr. Gould has emphasised the importance of consolidating the relevant legislation governing the administration of elections. I am minded to accept that recommendation as it relates to elections to the Scottish Parliament. Fifthly, Mr. Gould has proposed that electoral legislation is not applied to any election held within six months of a new provision coming into force. Provided suitable safeguards can be found, as Mr. Gould's report encourages, I am prepared to accept that recommendation for elections to the Scottish Parliament.
	Mr. Gould has also brought forward a very substantive option, designed in his view to tackle the fragmented nature of responsibility for all the elements that go into the conduct of elections. The creation of a chief returning officer with statutory powers would be a significant alteration of our present structures. I have an open mind on that, but would wish to see a wide-ranging debate among all interested parties about the implications of our moving to such a radically different structure of accountability.
	The topic of the overnight count is clearly an issue of concern to Mr. Gould. He recognises that there are advantages and disadvantages to overnight counting, but concludes by recommending that, if polls continue to close at 10 pm, there should be no overnight count of the ballot papers. To abandon completely overnight counting for parliamentary elections would represent a major departure from well-established precedent. I am not convinced that such a change would necessarily have any great benefit for voters, but I am willing to hear the voices of those with a different view.
	Mr. Gould devotes some time in his report to what he calls
	"the use of 'naming strategies' by political parties to seek an advantageous position on the regional side of the Scottish parliamentary ballot sheet".
	He refers to that practice as "sloganisation" of party names and recommends that legislation be amended to
	"minimise the possibility of confusing or misleading voters while facilitating a level playing field for all political parties".
	We will consider that recommendation alongside the others to which I have already referred.
	I wish to offer a preliminary comment on the recommendation about assigning responsibility for both elections to one jurisdictional entity. Mr. Gould concludes that the "Scottish Government" would be the best logical institution. I have to say that at present I am not persuaded that Mr. Gould's analysis of that point necessarily supports his conclusion. What we are surely looking for is improved planning and preparation for what in future will be two quite distinct sets of elections. The decoupling of parliamentary and local government elections should create clarity in terms of responsibility and accountability. That said, Mr. Gould's recommendation is simply that preliminary discussions should take place, and I am willing to give that serious consideration. There are clearly lessons to be learned and changes to be made, but I do agree with Mr. Gould when he says on the final page of his report that
	"it is important not to lose sight of the many positive aspects and good intentions of those involved in assembling and conducting the 3 May 2007 elections."
	Mr. Gould sets out the range of interconnected interests that are essential to getting right the various elements in the election process, but he has concluded that the fragmented nature of that planning process was itself a cause for flawed decisions. I acknowledge the Scotland Office's role in the overall process and can say now that we have lessons to learn from the systemic failures that occurred. The changes that I have announced today are the beginning of the process of correcting those failures and rebuilding trust in the electoral process.
	There have been different interpretations of what Mr. Gould means in his report by the phrase "partisan political self-interest". We now have the benefit of Mr. Gould's additional comments at his press conference today, where he confirmed that
	"party self-interest in this context is not necessarily related to one party".
	Mr. Gould's clarification reinforces my own reading of the report. For example, at several points—specifically, on pages 17, 18, 26, 48, 107 and 113—Mr. Gould advances the argument that too much of the detail prescribing the administration of the Scottish elections was set out in legislation, and was therefore the subject of excessive debate and prolonged discussion among politicians. In his view, much of that detail should be left to electoral administrators to decide, in order to reduce the role that "political interests" play in setting the administrative framework.
	The design of the Scottish parliamentary ballot paper was one example raised by Mr. Gould. The approach taken by the Scotland Office was to consult fully on the idea of a combined paper, including with the political parties, the Electoral Commission, returning officers and accessibility groups. Subsequently, and following further statutory consultation with the Electoral Commission, the order that included the ballot paper was debated and approved by Parliament. If that consultation was too inward looking and not focused firmly enough on the voter, as Mr. Gould suggests, I apologise and commit to learning the lessons for the future.
	The changes announced today, and those that I have committed to consider further, should give Scottish voters confidence that the experience of 3 May will not be repeated. Specifically, the commitment to use two separate ballot papers for the Scottish parliamentary poll and the removal of the need to use electronic counting outside the Scottish local elections will make elections in Scotland simpler and ensure that future polls are not defined by administrative problems.
	I have decided, as part of the necessary action in respect of recommendations affecting my responsibilities, to respond positively to an approach from the Scottish Affairs Select Committee to consider the report and let me have its views. I am grateful to the Committee's Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Sarwar), for his proactive approach.
	In addition, I wish there to be further parliamentary debate in this House and will initiate wider discussion with ministerial colleagues and with the wide range of interests involved in electoral matters. That would include the Electoral Commission and Mr. Gould and his team, if possible. I believe that those are important steps to take before we finalise views to be set out in our final written response to the report.
	I commend Mr Gould's report to this House and look forward to more extended debate on its findings in due course.

David Mundell: I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and for the advance copy that he let me have. Although the inquiry was not held according to the terms that we sought, Mr. Gould is a leading world expert on the organisation and management of elections, and is a person of impeccable independence and expertise.
	The Secretary of State's apparent suggestion that everybody is to blame, and that therefore no one is to blame, simply will not do. It is time for the Scotland Office to take responsibility for failing the people of Scotland. The right hon. Gentleman is also the Secretary of State for Defence, and today he has been forced to come to the House to defend his predecessor, who is, disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly, absent. However, the right hon. Gentleman has scant chance of success, because there can be no defence to the conclusion of an independent reviewer, who says that both the Scotland Office—the Scotland Office, Mr Speaker—and the Scottish Executive were frequently focused on partisan political interests in carrying out their responsibilities, overlooking voter interests and operational realities. Furthermore, what was characteristic of 2007 was a notable level of party self-interest evident in ministerial decision making.
	Does the Secretary of State agree that such behaviour is tantamount to attempting gerrymandering in the worst traditions of Tammany hall politics, and that it demonstrates complete contempt for the democratic process, laying bare the inner workings of the Labour establishment for all to see? Is not the position rendered even worse by the fact that the former Secretary of State was also Labour's Scottish election co-ordinator?
	The Secretary of State knows that when candidates and agents break the rules for their advantage they go to prison. What sanction does he propose for Ministers who seek to make rules for their partisan advantage? If the Government cannot be trusted with the basic democratic duty to run elections fairly and without political interference, what can they be trusted to do?
	On 23 May, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, South promised to apologise if the review found fault with the actions and decisions of the Scotland Office. The review has revealed not only partisan decision making but serial incompetence: Ministers unable to pass legislation in time, unable to take decisions in time and unable to communicate with their counterparts in Scotland; decisions taken against all advice and two different elections with two different voting systems on the same day, with votes to be counted electronically through the night. The fact that the election was not an even worse shambles is due to the work of returning officers and their officials, who should never have been treated in such a cavalier manner.
	The current Secretary of State has said that he is not in a position to give a definitive response to the report, but what is required is for his predecessor to give the apology that he promised, and the definitive response the House requires. In the light of that response, we shall judge whether his predecessor is fit to continue in public office. However, what is absolutely clear from this damning report is that in future no one should ever again hold ministerial responsibility for elections simultaneously with responsibility for the conduct of their party's campaign, and the Minister should immediately be stripped of those responsibilities in the Labour party.

Des Browne: I thank the hon. Gentleman for recognising the appropriate qualifications that Mr Gould brought to the job. Nobody reading the report can say that it is not robust and challenging; it has 120 pages. However, it is perfectly clear from the hon. Gentleman's contribution from the Dispatch Box that he has not had the opportunity to read them all yet— [ Interruption. ] —or to absorb them all.
	I caution the hon. Gentleman about quoting discrete parts of the report out of context, even though I am about to do just that to give the House an example of the danger of doing so—he may want to take particular note. I shall quote one sentence, from page 120:
	"Almost without exception, the voter was treated as an afterthought by virtually all the other stakeholders."
	The hon. Gentleman's party falls within the definition "all the other stakeholders"— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Let the Secretary of State speak.

Des Browne: The Conservative party's response makes my point. If you are going to comment on the report—[Hon. Members: "We."] If one is going to comment on the report, one should at least take the time and trouble to read all of it. Moreover, it would help if hon. Members had listened to Ron Gould when he introduced the report and was asked the very questions that lie behind the observations. In response to a particular question, he said:
	"So I don't think I would absolve any party".
	He was asked about gerrymandering and said:
	"'Party self-interest' in this context is not necessarily related to one party."
	It behoves us all as the political classes— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope, Mr. Swayne, that you will not spend the time on the statement just shouting across the Chamber. That is unlike you. You are not that type of person.

Des Browne: Despite the endeavours of the hon. Gentleman and no doubt others, I am focusing on making sure that what happened will not happen again. The response that I have given today will, I think, ensure that it will never happen again, because I anticipate that the Scottish Parliament will exercise its power to decouple the elections. However, it chose not to exercise that power before these elections; it kept them together.
	To return to the report, Mr. Gould made clear what the phrase that the hon. Member for Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale (David Mundell) relies on so heavily actually means. Mr. Gould had the opportunity to single out individuals, but he does not call for anyone to resign. He says that no was being singled out for blame. These were complex issues. People acted in good faith and we have to move forward.

Mohammad Sarwar: Does my right hon. Friend agree that this country has the fine tradition of announcing election results as soon as possible? Will he assure me that he will maintain this tradition?
	Does my right hon. Friend further agree that the statement of Alex Salmond, the First Minister, was intentionally misleading when it appeared on the ballot papers in relation to the regional list? Will my right hon. Friend take up the recommendation from Ron Gould that the party name should appear on the ballot paper in future elections?

Des Browne: My hon. Friend chairs the Scottish Affairs Committee and has suggested that the Committee consider the report in the detail that its complexity requires. He raises two important points, both of which I dealt with in the statement. I agree that overnight counts are a long-standing part of our democratic and political process. There is an expectation among the electorate that they will have the results of parliamentary elections immediately after the polls close. That necessitates overnight counts and I do not think that it is any more difficult for machines to count votes overnight than it is for them to count them during the day. It might be more difficult for people to do that, but my experience of elections is that overnight manual counts have been very successful for decades.
	I am prepared to consider my hon. Friend's point on that issue, as I am prepared to consider the recommendations about the designation of parties. However, there will need to be consultation and consideration on the nature of the recommendations.

Alistair Carmichael: I also thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Ron Gould is to be congratulated on the report. It is a thorough and authoritative analysis of what happened in May and he has clearly defied those who said that he would not be able to produce such an independent piece of work.
	I regret to say, however, that the Secretary of State's statement today raised almost as many questions as it answered. He is right: all parties had a role to play in this process. Only one party, however, took decisions—his party and that is a fact from which there is no hiding.
	The role of the Secretary of State's predecessor, the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, South (Mr. Alexander), requires close examination. Essentially, the Secretary of State has come to the House today to say that a wee boy done it and ran away, which really is not good enough. It has been observed that the Scotland Office does not have much to do. In fact, the organisation of elections is the only executive function that it retains. The Gould report is a detailed and damning critique of the Department's failings. Today, it seems that another Department has been added to the list of those that are not fit for purpose. It is regrettable that the Secretary of State is not prepared to acknowledge today that the logical and sensible next move would be to give the Scottish Parliament control over its own elections. The Secretary of State says that he is yet to be persuaded of that, but he does not offer any reason why the law should continue to defy logic in such a way.
	The report is about more than administrative failings in the electoral process; it is about the politics that led up to that process. The Secretary of State has already referred to Mr. Gould's comments, and expanded on Mr. Gould's reference to "partisan political interests", but the House should be aware of the whole paragraph in which that phrase is used. It speaks of Ministers who
	"were frequently focused on partisan political interests in carrying out their responsibilities, overlooking voter interests and operational realities within the electoral administration timetable. At worst, the Ministers disregarded the highly negative and disruptive influence on the elections caused by their delays in arriving at key decisions. At best, they either overlooked or were poorly advised with regard to the serious operational consequences that could and did result."
	It is clear from that paragraph that the process within the Scotland Office was removed from the normal Government process. Some personal explanation by the Secretary of State's predecessor is therefore required.
	The Secretary of State will be judged on how he responds to the report, and on whether he ensures, in the interests of the voter, that we will never again face the problems that we faced on 3 May, but the matter does not end there. The conclusion that I draw from the report is that the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, South was responsible for a crisis that brought into question the fundamental integrity of our electoral process. It is wrong that he should evade responsibility simply by virtue of taking on a new job in Government. A villain who has left the scene of his crime is still a villain. He must explain his actions to the House, and if no satisfactory explanation is forthcoming, the Prime Minister should remove him from Government.

Des Browne: I refute entirely the suggestion that my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Scotland, now Secretary of State for International Development, in any way acted according to party interest in making the decision. I accept that the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael) quotes the report correctly. He does not misrepresent the report, but there is not a jot of evidence in it that supports that assertion. The issue of party interest therefore requires further explanation, and I suspect that that is why the media explored the issue with Mr. Gould this morning, when he introduced the report. I have quoted the explanation that Mr. Gould gave, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows exactly what that explanation was. I cannot go beyond that. If people want to understand what the phrase means, they have to look at it in the context of the whole report, the constant references to the issues throughout the report, and indeed Mr. Gould's explanation.
	Let me deal with the issue of the recommendation on who should have sole responsibility for the elections. The issue is covered in one paragraph on page 111 of the report, which says:
	"As long as the responsibilities for the decisions which have an impact on the Scottish parliamentary and local government elections are divided between the Scotland Office and the Scottish Government, it cannot be guaranteed that these electoral processes will be conducted effectively, due to the fragmentation of the legislation and decision-making in this context."
	That is in the context of combined elections.
	There is no question but that that is exactly what it means. The report goes on to make the recommendation that there should be exploratory discussions
	"with a view towards assigning responsibility for both elections to one jurisdictional entity".
	If the elections are to be decoupled, those circumstances will change. I am happy to have those discussions, but we should recognise that if other recommendations of the report are accepted, they will change the environment. If the hon. Gentleman is arguing for it, he must argue from the evidence in the report, which is small, easily accessible and able to be understood.

Gavin Strang: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh Scottish parliamentary constituency had the highest number of spoiled constituency ballot papers? I thank him for his constructive response to the workmanlike report from Ron Gould. Will he confirm that not only that report but the Arbuthnott report recommended that the elections to local authorities in Scotland and to the Scottish Parliament should be held separately, so the Scottish Executive certainly needs to give that careful consideration? Finally, may I thank my right hon. Friend for pointing out that for the Scottish Parliament we do not need electronic counting of the ballots?

Des Browne: I welcome my right hon. Friend's contribution, and I can answer yes to all the questions that he poses. I was aware of the comparatively high number of spoiled ballot papers in the constituency that he identifies. No individual constituency is investigated in the Gould report, because the authors of the report determined that the parameters within which they would be working would not explore the outcome or validity of the election. I suspect that that is why they avoided the detailed consideration of any individual constituency. However, their interpretation of the reasons why there were so many spoiled ballot papers essentially comes down to the fact that the two ballots were combined on the one piece of paper, and confused the electorate.

Andrew MacKay: Just where is the Secretary of State's predecessor this afternoon? Why is he not at the Dispatch Box, apologising? How can he continue to be the Secretary of State for International Development, going round the third world lecturing on parliamentary democracy, when he has been caught with his hand in the till?

Des Browne: I entirely refute the claim that my right hon. Friend has been caught with his hand in the till. That is not what happened.  [Interruption.] Hon. Members should read the whole report. There is, for example, a suggestion that parties' self-interest was served by holding a count overnight. How can that possibly be to the advantage of any individual party? It is perfectly clear that it was considered to be to the advantage of party politics, as opposed to the advantage of any party. I defy any hon. Member to explain how a count overnight could be in the interests of any individual party.
	The right hon. Member for Bracknell (Mr. Mackay) asked where my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development is. The answer is that he is making his way back from the United States of America, where he was attending a meeting of the World Bank, delivering a policy which all of us would wish him to continue to deliver, with the expertise that he has shown.

David Marshall: In the local government elections, most of the spoiled votes were due to people marking their ballot paper with crosses instead of 1, 2 and 3. Does my right hon. Friend agree that there was nowhere near enough advance publicity regarding this vital change to the electoral process? Will he ensure that that does not happen in the future? Will he also reconsider his position in relation to electronic counting machines, and ensure that they, and DRS, never again play any part in any election?

Des Browne: There is a recommendation about education—and if the elections are decoupled, as we anticipate that they will be, it will be much easier to educate the electorate about an individual election in future. That is the responsibility of the devolved Administration. It will have to decide how that goes forward, and who, if anyone, it will contract with for electronic counting of ballot papers—if it agrees that that is necessary. For my part, I think that the decoupling of the elections of itself, and the recommendations of the report, makes it clear that there will be no necessity for electronic counting in elections, either for this Parliament or for the Scottish Parliament.

Angus Robertson: I thank the Secretary of State for the advance copy of his statement and welcome the work of Ron Gould and his colleagues. On behalf of the Scottish National party, I particularly welcome the sensible suggestion that in future the management of the Scottish elections should be the Scottish Government's responsibility.
	I hope that everybody in all parties agrees that the integrity and impartiality of the management of elections has to be uppermost among our responsibilities. In the case that we are discussing, that responsibility lay with the then Secretary of State for Scotland, who is not here, and the present-day Minister of State at the Scotland Office. We learn from the report—this is the crunch point in the exercise of ministerial office—that Labour Ministers
	"frequently focused on partisan political interests...overlooking voter interests"
	That is a scandal in a western European democracy. The charges are extremely serious—when will Ministers take responsibility and do the honourable thing by resigning?

Des Browne: I have already dealt with that issue. I repeat that I entirely refute the idea that my right hon. Friend or my hon. Friend acted as the hon. Gentleman describes. I pray in aid the whole report, and the explanation that Ron Gould himself gave to questions; I cannot answer for him, but I can refer to the answers that he gave. He takes the feet from the interpretation on which the hon. Gentleman relies. Given the constraints and circumstances of this opportunity in the House, it might behove the hon. Gentleman better to have accepted the obvious criticism, explicitly made, of how his party behaved in the elections; that might have given his position more credibility than it has.

John McFall: As one who was on the ground that day, I should say that we all let our constituents down, because there was a need for a more professional and better-informed public information campaign. That focuses on the work of the Electoral Commission; that issue has to be addressed, as well as the professionalism of returning officers. Whoever is First Minister—Alex Salmond or Donald Duck—clarity has to be brought to the list system, so that such situations do not happen again. Will the Secretary of State give me an assurance that the consultation process will be speedy, so that any recommendations that he accepts will be brought in well before the next election? The system could then be tried and tested, and our constituents will not suffer in the same way again.

Des Browne: I can give my right hon. Friend the assurance that he and the voters of Scotland expect—that this will not happen again. The report makes key recommendations; I expect that the Scottish Executive will act on at least one, and I will act on the others. The combined effect of the acceptance of those recommendations will ensure that such things do not happen again.
	Other issues have been explored, of course. They may not have been directly responsible for what happened on 3 May, but the investigation has revealed a number of things that could be considerably improved. I have listed them, I accept that we will take them forward for discussion, and I have committed to doing some of them.
	I do not speak for the Electoral Commission, but I understand that it has made it clear that it will learn lessons, which I am sure will relate to voter identification. We will have to deal with the issue of clarity of party identification, given the report's analysis of its effect. I agree with my right hon. Friend that the report has criticisms of all those involved in the political process; frankly, a mature approach requires all parties to accept that.

Eleanor Laing: Some of us in this House believe that the position of Secretary of State for Scotland is an important, honourable and ancient one. Is not this debacle—this tragedy for democracy—evidence that the Prime Minister, and the previous Prime Minister, has shown little regard for the people of Scotland? Indeed, it is an insult to the people of Scotland that the position of Secretary of State for Scotland should be tagged on to the position of another Secretary of State within the Cabinet. However capable the right hon. Gentleman and his predecessor, who is now Secretary of State for International Development, might personally be, it is obvious from the debacle that we see before us that one person cannot carry out both of those onerous duties. Will the right hon. Gentleman take the message to the Prime Minister that this House believes that not having a full-time Secretary of State for Scotland is an insult to the people of Scotland?

Des Browne: The hon. Lady brings a degree of personal knowledge of such conflicts to the question, as at one stage she was shadow Secretary of State for Scotland, although at the time she represented an English constituency, which she still does—[Hon. Members: "We are all British."] I understand that.  [ Interruption. ] If Opposition Front Benchers could just contain themselves, I am making the very point that they are making a noise about, which is that many of us in this House have been called on at different times in our political careers to be able, in nominal terms, to do different things. It is the ability to be able to deliver that is the test. I do not accept the hon. Lady's point, but I do accept that we all have an interest in ensuring that the very positive recommendations of the report should be taken forward as quickly as possible.
	While I am on my feet, I remind the Liberal Democrats that they, too, were in government in Scotland, and had responsibilities when these decisions were made; they were part of the decision-making processes that combined to create what people have called a perfect storm.

Sandra Osborne: Many of my constituents felt extremely short-changed by the whole election process, so I welcome the Secretary of State's recognition of that on behalf of the Scotland Office. I look forward to similar apologies from all the other parties concerned in due course.
	Will the Secretary of State look into the role of returning officers? He may be aware that they receive substantial payments in addition to their roles mainly as chief executives of councils in Scotland, although officers at a lower grade often do the actual work. Will he consider whether there is a better way of organising things, rather than through the current returning officer system?

Des Browne: When Members who have not read the report in full—they appear to be here in substantial numbers—get a chance to do so, they will find the part about the professionalisation of returning officers, where some important recommendations are made. I think that those of us who have experience of having to deal with returning officers in the context of elections would welcome some of the professionalisation that is suggested. This is properly a matter for my right hon. and hon. Friends the Ministers at the Ministry of Justice. I will ask them to examine the matter carefully to see whether we can take forward these recommendations to meet the objective that Ron Gould sets out.

Tony Baldry: A sensible silk would start his plea in mitigation with an apology, but we have not had a scintilla of a shadow of a suggestion of an apology from the Secretary of State. Is that simply because he believes that there is absolutely nothing in the report for him and other Ministers to apologise for?

Des Browne: The hon. Gentleman is wrong on two counts. I am not a senior counsel, so I am not a silk. And secondly, I did apologise. When he reads the official record, he will see that I used the word "apologise".

Brian H Donohoe: Although there is much to be commended in the report's conclusions, one area is not highlighted as I would want it be—the part about the different forms of election. There are four different systems in operation, and surely it is time to return to one: first past the post. Secondly, in connection with an earlier point made by my right hon. Friend, may I say that electronic counting is the worst way to count votes? That was the worst experience I have had at a count; I could see absolutely nothing taking place that made any sense. As a consequence, we have what I describe as a democratic deficit, which must be addressed.

Des Browne: In my statement in response to the report, I made it clear that we do not anticipate using electronic counting again in parliamentary elections for which we have responsibility. The decision to have a different system of voting in local government elections was one made, quite rightly, by the Scottish Parliament in the exercise of its devolved powers. As I am a supporter of devolution, I support its right to make that decision. It behoves all of us to accept the reality as far as voters in Scotland are concerned, and to ensure that we conduct elections in a way that takes account of the confusion that might be generated. We should also use existing agencies to ensure that voters are educated so that they understand the systems and what the active exercise of their vote means, however they do it. If people understand that, they will use their votes appropriately.

Charles Kennedy: The Secretary of State indicated that on the back of this report he will have a period of reflection and consultation. Does he intend to use that opportunity to reflect and consult on the operation of the postal ballot system? In 25 years' experience locally, I have never known an election at any level where I have heard from so many people who felt effectively disfranchised because of the vagaries and shortcomings in the operation of the postal ballot. People are being excluded, not least in a vast area such as the highlands and islands, where family or work commitments can change at comparatively short notice. Will he include that important issue in the forthcoming consultation process?

Des Browne: I can immediately contrast the right hon. Gentleman's constructive contribution with that of his Front-Bench colleague, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Carmichael), who for a moment forgot that the phrase "Scottish Executive Ministers" in the report refers to Liberal Democrat Ministers as well as Labour Ministers.

Charles Kennedy: That is because I am beyond ambition.

Des Browne: When someone has achieved at least some of their ambitions, as the right hon. Gentleman has, they can retire from ambition—but perhaps the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is not in that position yet.
	The right hon. Gentleman raises an important issue. There is an interesting chapter in the report about postal votes, which collects evidence of experiences that a number of us have seen acted out in our constituencies, in this election and others. If I have understood the report correctly, the principal cause of the problem with postal votes in the 3 May election was the combination of the ballot papers and the bulk of paper to be handled, how it came out of the post and whether it could be scanned into the electronic system. I do not think that those circumstances will be repeated. They certainly will not while I have responsibility for elections to the Scottish Parliament, so they are unlikely to happen again. There are, however, other recommendations and advice for returning officers that should be studied carefully. Those fit into the category of recommendations that I think it better to refer to my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Ministry of Justice. If there are proper lessons to learn, they are not just for Scotland but the whole of the United Kingdom.

Frank Field: Given the smooth running of elections to this House, when the Secretary of State makes his final report, will he find room for a section that draws the main lessons from the events that we are considering and addresses them to those who wish to change elections to the UK Parliament, especially those who advocate a combination of constituency and list systems?

Des Browne: rose—

Hon. Members: Just say yes.

Des Browne: I am tempted just to say yes—but I do not want this to move from a statement on the Gould report on the conduct of the elections to a debate about electoral systems. However, personally, I think that there is much in what my right hon. Friend says.

David Wilshire: To save the Secretary of State from pointing it out, I start by saying that I am English and I represent an English constituency. For years I was proud of the United Kingdom's electoral systems and of the fact that people all over the world looked to us for the way in which to conduct proper elections. Then a judge said that postal vote fraud in England would disgrace a banana republic, and now Labour Ministers are accused in an independent report of trying to corrupt the electoral process. When will someone resign, or are the Government totally without shame?

Des Browne: The report does not suggest that any Minister tried to corrupt the electoral process. [Hon. Members: "It does."] It does not. I defy the hon. Gentleman to show me where the report states that, even if a sentence or two is taken out of context. I rebut the suggestion that any part of the report even hints at that. Ron Gould certainly did not say that today when he was asked in his press conference what phrases meant.
	I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman, an English Member and fellow Unionist, feels it appropriate to ask questions about this matter because it is of interest to him, and to this Parliament. I agree with him that we should do everything that we can to protect the integrity of our electoral system. However, the report makes no suggestion that anyone was at fraud. The administration failed; there is no suggestion that anyone was at fraud. Hon. Members who interpret the report in that way misrepresent it.

Anne Begg: I am glad to hear the Secretary of State emphasise that the lessons in the report go beyond Scotland, because we are not considering simply a little local Scottish difficulty. Some of the issues, especially sloganising party names, problems with postal votes and the construction of the ballots, are covered by the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. If the Electoral Commission does not have the discretion to deal with those issues, especially ruling some party names and slogans out of order, we need to examine the legislation, which covers the UK and all the elections in it. It is important not to lose sight of that in our discussions.

Des Browne: I agree with my hon. Friend. That is why we have already committed to feeding in to the Green Paper on consultation and constitutional matters some of issues that this valuable report raises. There are lessons for all of us who are involved in politics about getting, in our debates and discussions—which, of necessity, as Ron Gould says, we will approach from a party political point of view— the right mix between such an approach and the voters' interest. The point at the heart of the report is that the political classes got that balance wrong. That may be a function of the way in which we have dealt with such issues historically. Perhaps we are now at a turning point for the way in which we should tackle them in future.

Malcolm Bruce: Following what my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Mr. Kennedy) said, may I tell the Secretary of State that the problem for many people with postal ballots was not their complexity or whether the form fitted the envelope, but the fact that they never saw them, because they did not arrive in time?
	The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) referred to electoral systems. The single transferable vote system for local government had far fewer problems than the system for election to the Scottish Parliament. May I therefore recommend to the Secretary of State that the right thing to do is simplify the electoral systems by ensuring that they all use STV?

Des Browne: Let me say two things to the right hon. Gentleman, who I think was making a party political point dressed up in another way. First, the failure to get the ballot papers printed and distributed in time for postal votes was, in my interpretation of the relevant chapter of the report, also a function of the fact that the ballot paper was a combined paper produced using a centralised print scheme, and the fact that the bulk of the numbers could not be processed. It all comes back to the combination of the two papers, in my view. The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced politician and he will have a chance to read the report at his leisure and come to his own conclusions, but that is my view, on two readings of the report. We might even have a chance to ask Mr. Gould whether that interpretation is right.
	Secondly, when I looked at the comparative number of spoiled or rejected papers under STV as opposed to those in the Scottish Parliament elections, which uses the first-past-the-post system and the additional member system, I came to the same conclusion that the right hon. Gentleman did. However, more careful consideration might suggest that the system of auto-adjudication under STV may have masked the number of people who did not enter their votes properly on the STV ballot paper, because it accepted votes with a cross on them, if there was only one cross. We need to be careful about coming to conclusions from a partial interpretation of the ballot papers, as there may be hidden mistakes made by people that did not come out in the rejection system.

David Hamilton: A sequence of events normally precedes a disaster—I say that from an old miner's point of view—and we saw a number of sequences of events, which resulted in probably the worst debacle that we have seen for many years. It ill becomes all parties first to argue that they want an independent review—many of them also questioned whether it was really going to be independent—and then, now that that independent review is here, to call for one person's head. A sequence of events means that everybody has to take some blame for what happened. I look forward to the debate that we will have, because I for one will have my say on what went wrong. I believe that thousands upon thousands of Labour voters were disfranchised in that election. We should have won that election, and I still believe that we would have won it if all the votes had been recounted, as I said at the time.

Des Browne: I commend my hon. Friend for his contribution. He has distinguished himself in the House as a Member who is prepared to lay criticism wherever he thinks it should lie, in debates to which he contributes. His point about the integrity of the report as a whole is an important one, which I have been stressing all afternoon. When Ron Gould specifically says that no one should be singled out for blame, it defeats me why people interpret his words in order to do just that.

Alan Reid: When a public opinion research company was commissioned to do research into the Scottish Parliament ballot paper, it found that
	"the rejection rate of 4 per cent. was significant as this was close to the actual rejection rate in the 3 May election."
	Following that report, the Electoral Commission recommended to the Secretary of State's predecessor that further consideration be given to combining both votes on one ballot paper. Why did the Secretary of State's predecessor reject that advice? Was it because he had already decided that, for party political advantage, he wanted a ballot paper with that design?

Des Browne: If the hon. Gentleman is going to make that sort of allegation, he at least has the obligation to say what the party political advantage could be for any party in having a combined ballot paper. If he can explain that to me, I will give some credence to his assertion. He will have the opportunity to do that somewhere else, outside the Chamber. He surely has the analysis in his mind and he should be able to tell me what it is. I challenge him to do that, because I cannot for the life of me see how any individual party is advantaged by a combined ballot paper. If he could even give me some indication through his body language whether he has any reason, that would help.  [ Interruption. ] Right—I suspected that.
	Let us deal with the issue of advice. The fact is that the testing was carried out, and that it apparently revealed a certain level of error. Despite that, however, the Electoral Commission, which carried out the work, reported it back to the Secretary of State and strongly recommended the combined ballot paper on the basis of its research. It did the work, and it recommended— [ Interruption. ] Part of the problem for the hon. Gentleman is that the letter containing that recommendation exists. It just so happens that Mr. Gould, although he was offered it, did not come to look at it. That is not necessarily a criticism of him. It is a criticism of those who seek to extend his conclusions beyond what they will sustain, which is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is doing.

Katy Clark: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the inconsistency of approach of returning officers throughout Scotland towards recounts in the elections in May. Does he agree that, irrespective of whether an electronic or a manual system is being used, it is appropriate that recounts should be available, particularly when a result is close?

Des Browne: I know that there was great concern about the fact that, on the same night and in pretty similar circumstances, one officer in charge of a poll decided to have a recount while another said that to do so was impossible. That caused a degree of concern, and I believe that all democrats should be concerned about it. Because of the constraints that Ron Gould and his team put on themselves during the review, however, they could not look at any of those constituencies individually. Perhaps it was better that they did not, because they did not want to open up the validity of the outcome of the election, and I think that most of us would want to accept that. However, this does not alter the fact that the whole thread of their recommendations on the professionalisation of returning officers ought to deal with that kind of inconsistency, and it is to be hoped that we can establish a process that professionalises them to the point at which all voters and all these kinds of decisions are treated in the same way across the country.

Julian Lewis: May I urge the Secretary of State to give a more thoughtful response to the cogent points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mrs. Laing)? The reality is that this monumental mistake—I nearly said "cock-up", but that would have been unparliamentary—was made, and was known to have been made, at a time when there was a full-time Secretary of State for Scotland. What sort of message did it send to the people of Scotland subsequently to make Secretary of State for Scotland into a part-time post? For that matter, what message did it send to the armed forces to do the same thing to the post of Secretary of State for Defence? It was a very bad message indeed to send to both constituencies.

Des Browne: Factually, the hon. Gentleman is incorrect, but it would serve no purpose to point out when there was a full-time Secretary of State and when there was a part-time one. That is irrelevant. The point that he is making is that we should not have a part-time Secretary of State for Scotland. However, the people of Scotland, for whom he purports to speak, are much less exercised by this issue than he is. I suspect that he is making the point for party political purposes, rather than out of any consideration for what is in the best interests of the people of Scotland.

Gordon Banks: Returning to the issue of manual and electronic counting, does my right hon. Friend agree that the return to a manual count would be the biggest and most significant way of restoring the electorate's faith in the system? It would be much more significant than having professional returning officers.

Des Browne: The presentation of ballot papers that voters can clearly understand, and that do not confuse them by the way in which they are combined, will be the single biggest advantage for voters in the future. Making all these comparatively straightforward, simple decisions now will ensure that this never happens again; my hon. Friend is perfectly correct about that.

Jo Swinson: To return to the issue of the postal voting chaos that disfranchised many of my constituents, I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State is keen to extend the time frame for elections, but that is not the only issue that needs to be looked at. What action does he plan to take on the ineffectiveness of some of the private companies involved in running the elections, particularly in regard to the postal ballot? Presumably, those companies were contracted on the basis that they knew when the deadlines were and when they needed to have the postal ballot forms printed in order for them to be delivered in a timely manner. Given that some of those companies have a poor track record on working on elections—not only for Scotland but for the Greater London authority in 2004—what does he intend to do about this?

Des Browne: The report addresses those issues and brings to the attention of those who need to know it that these contracts were made with penalty clauses. They should have been carried out in a professional manner and if they were not, it is a matter for the contracting parties to take forward the redress to which they are entitled. More importantly, we now have some significant experience of handling postal votes and we should be getting better rather than worse at doing it. I note that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills) is in his place on the Front Bench and I am sure that he is listening carefully to this discussion. I propose that these important potential lessons relating to postal votes and associated matters be transferred to the Ministry of Justice. If there are lessons to be learned and actions to be taken, voters right across the UK should benefit from them.

Adam Afriyie: This has clearly been an embarrassing, difficult and uncomfortable statement for the Secretary of State for Scotland—and rightly so. The right hon. Gentleman said in his statement:
	"If that consultation was too inward looking and not focused firmly enough on the voter, as Mr. Gould suggests, I apologise and commit to learning the lessons for the future."
	I would like to give the Secretary of State an opportunity to expand on that apology, which is very narrow. It is conditional and focuses only on the consultation process. Will he take this opportunity to make the situation less uncomfortable for himself by apologising further—beyond the limited and conditional apology that he has so far provided?

Des Browne: I am entirely content with the words in my statement. I am entirely content that they respond in a positive way. When we all reflect on what happened and the criticisms that have been made, we will be able to go far beyond the places where Opposition Members have been trying to focus their questions to me this afternoon. We all have something to learn from this, and that includes the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie), who I am sure will be receptive.

Points of Order

John Bercow: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. It is heartening that, as a result of the business statement last Thursday, the first debate on Burma ever to take place on the Floor of the House is scheduled for Monday 29 October. Pursuant to that fact, have you received an indication that the debate will be opened by the Foreign Secretary? As Chairman of the all-party democracy in Burma group, I am very concerned that if it were opened by anyone other than the Foreign Secretary, it would send a very serious message of weakness and indifference to the butchers of Rangoon.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman will be well aware that the question of who the Government decide will lead for them on any particular debate is not a matter for me.

David Mundell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In the light of the seriousness of the issues debated in today's statement, the content of the Gould report and the previous undertakings given by the right hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, South (Mr. Alexander), will you confirm that it is in order for a Cabinet Member to come before the House to make a personal statement? Can you advise us whether any such request has been received?

Mr. Deputy Speaker: The contents of today's statement will no doubt be digested by the entire House, but the Government's reaction is entirely a matter for them.

Julian Lewis: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance, as I fear that I may have inadvertently misled the House. I had not realised that the predecessor of the Secretary of State for Scotland was also a part-time Secretary of State for Scotland, albeit that he was not simultaneously a part-time Secretary of State for Defence. Is there any way that I can set the record straight on that matter?— [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We have had enough explanations of everyone's jobs today. Let us move on.

Packaging (Reduction)

Jo Swinson: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a national body to promote and enforce packaging reduction; to make provision for the disposal of packaging by certain retailers; to establish binding targets for the reduction of packaging; and for connected purposes.
	Packaging is part of our everyday lives. It protects the products we buy, provides information to the consumer and acts as a marketing tool to boost sales. Much packaging is essential: we would have a problem getting a pint of milk or baked beans home without it. Much of it, however, is not. Even in our environmentally conscious times, packaging has recently been growing, not falling. We now send 5 million tonnes of packaging to landfill every year. We need to take a serious look at the packaging that fills our supermarket shelves, and ask how much of it is necessary, and how much is wasteful, needless and excessive.
	Both economically and environmentally, packaging comes at a price. Families spend about £470 a year on packaging. We see unnecessary packaging every time we visit the supermarket, in the form of shrink-wrapped cucumbers or individually packaged bananas. Often, consumers do not have the option to buy a product without the excessive packaging. Today, the Local Government Association announced that council tax payers face fines of up to £3 billion if we fail to cut the amount of waste thrown into landfill. Consumers are paying three times over for excess packaging. We pay the cost of the packaging at the checkout, we pay increased council taxes and landfill taxes, and we will all pay the environmental cost of more waste going to landfill for years to come.
	The Government have taken some, albeit limited, steps to tackle excess packaging. EU regulations on producer responsibilities and the essential requirements of packaging have been adopted into UK law. WRAP—the Waste and Resources Action Programme—has taken positive steps on research into minimising packaging. However, the waste strategy for England, published in May, was a missed opportunity. It includes a handful of measures on packaging, such as higher recycling targets, but no real ideas on how to get to the heart of the problem; it contains new targets but no fresh thinking. We should go much further.
	Supermarkets have taken some steps to cut back on packaging and reduce waste. Sainsbury's came top in a survey that I carried out this year of Easter egg packaging, for reducing to a minimum the often gross amount of packaging that usually accompanies Easter eggs. Waitrose has taken steps to pilot plastic-bag-free stores, requiring customers to bring their own reusable shopping bags.
	Across Government and industry, the movement to curb excessive and wasteful packaging has shown signs of life, but is in serious need of a growth spurt. My Bill sets out steps to be taken in five areas to cut excessive packaging and reduce waste: reform of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs' Courtauld commitments; augmenting the power of trading standards officers; creating a new national body on packaging; placing responsibilities on supermarkets to tackle the problem; and encouraging the reuse of plastic bags.
	The Courtauld commitments are voluntary agreements brokered by DEFRA to reduce packaging levels. Ninety per cent. of the UK grocery sector signed up to them, and agreed to stop the growth in packaging waste by 2008 and achieve an absolute reduction in packaging waste by 2010. That sounds promising, but if we look below the surface, problems start to appear.
	In answer to parliamentary questions, I have been told both that each Courtauld signatory "declares" its total packaging use each year, and that information on the annual total packaging use of each signatory is "not routinely collected". Which is it? How are we benchmarking progress towards the targets? Another parliamentary answer tells me that a draft protocol is being consulted on with a view to it being agreed and implemented "in this reporting year". If packaging growth is to be stopped as soon as next year, however, surely the means of reporting progress should be well established by now. How will future success be measured if there is not already a clear benchmark?
	The Bill proposes that the Courtauld voluntary measures be translated into binding targets. Similar steps have been taken in other EU member states. The Courtauld targets are sensible, but we must reinforce the system so that they are given genuine priority, rather than lip service, by companies.
	We already have legislation against excessive packaging. The problem is that it is not working. In theory, trading standards officers can combat excess packaging using the Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations 2003, which stipulate that
	"packaging volume and weight be...the minimum adequate amount to maintain the necessary level of safety, hygiene and acceptance for the packed product and for the consumer."
	Since the introduction of those, and their predecessor regulations nine years ago, there have been just four prosecutions for excess packaging. I have surveyed trading standards services around the country, and they are clearly finding it difficult to build a case for enforcement using the regulations. Wiltshire county council says that
	"there are numerous problems with enforcement".
	West Berkshire council says that
	"these regulations are difficult to enforce given the definition of what is excessive."
	South Ayrshire county council says
	"there is little real impact that the regulations are having on reducing the problem."
	It is far too easy for businesses to show that they are complying with the regulations. Product presentation and brand image are taken strongly into account. If producers can find any evidence that sales have dropped as a result of a packaging size reduction, they can use packaging that is larger than necessary. A packaging arms race has begun, with ever bigger branded boxes jostling for space on supermarket shelves, and the consumer is left to pick up the tab for both the packaging and its disposal.
	Even if the regulations were well worded it would make no difference, because trading standards departments are told not to bother. Last year the Rogers review described the policing of excess packaging as a "non-priority", and no mention was made of packaging in the 2005-06 statement of central Government priorities for the trading standards service. The current regulations need technical amendments to prioritise the reduction of excess packaging over the needs of marketing departments, and Government need to stop ignoring the issue and provide some leadership.
	My Bill calls for the establishment of a national body on packaging to support trading standards departments. It would work with them to tackle large-scale producers of excess packaging, and would offer a more co-ordinated and systematic approach to the problem. Such a national body could also place more emphasis on proactive packaging enforcement than trading standards departments, which tend to act only on specific complaints from the public.
	If supermarkets and other retailers are to drive change and reduce packaging, the ball must be in their court. They must be given an incentive. Consumers should be empowered to take action and return unwanted packaging to the point of sale. The Bill requires large retailers to provide an in-store deposit point for the disposal of excess packaging before the customer leaves the store. Broadly speaking, packaging that can be removed by the customer before he or she leaves the shop is excessive, whereas packaging that must stay on the product if it is to arrive at the customer's home in adequate condition is necessary. Making retailers take back the excess packaging that they force on consumers will send the message, loud and clear, that if they do not want to deal with it, they should not put it on the shelf in the first place.
	Disposable plastic bags are a highly visible symbol of wasteful practice on the part of supermarkets. An estimated 17 billion plastic bags are given away annually by United Kingdom supermarkets—enough plastic to cover an area the size of London, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and west Yorkshire combined. Some countries have attempted to tackle excessive use of disposable plastic bags by introducing bag taxes, but evidence of their effectiveness or otherwise is mixed. Supporters of the idea point to the example of Ireland, where a 15-cent bag tax resulted in a 90 per cent. reduction in plastic bag use, but critics argue that the alternatives to plastic bags are heavier, and that the additional carbon emissions from transporting them offset any gains.
	A better alternative to a plastic bag tax would be requiring supermarkets to participate in a deposit scheme for carrier bags. It would take the form of a levy—say 10p—paid on a bag at the point of sale, which would be redeemed when the bag was returned to the store. The charge would encourage customers to use bags sparingly, and in practice customers bringing the bags back would reuse them until the end of their useful life, when they would redeem the deposit or receive another bag. Attaching a redeemable deposit value to the bags would also create an incentive to reduce plastic bag litter.
	We face many huge environmental challenges, and packaging is just one small but important part of a much bigger environmental picture. Outside the Chamber, I have found huge support for my campaign to cut excess packaging.  The Independent and groups such as the Women's Institute are running similar campaigns. The reaction both of my constituents and of people who have contacted me from around the country has been overwhelmingly positive In circumstances such as these, when a clear case for action is backed up by strong public support, the onus is on Parliament to act. Both the environmental and the economic costs make this an issue that must be tackled urgently.
	The Government have recently come under fire for stealing policies from other parties. Lest my Bill does not receive sufficient parliamentary time during the current Session to progress to Third Reading, I invite the Minister to feel free to adopt the good ideas in it—and I promise that, rather than criticising, I shall be delighted.
	I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Jo Swinson, Chris Huhne, Susan Kramer, Andrew Stunell, Norman Baker, John Barrett, Jenny Willott, Peter Bottomley, Bob Spink, Derek Wyatt, Mark Lazarowicz and Mrs. Sharon Hodgson.

Packaging (reduction)

Jo Swinson accordingly presented a Bill to establish a national body to promote and enforce packaging reduction; to make provision for the disposal of packaging by certain retailers; to establish binding targets for the reduction of packaging; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Thursday 25 October, and to be printed [Bill 165].

ROYAL ASSENT

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:
	Sustainable Communities Act 2007
	Greater London Authority Act 2007
	Further Education and Training Act 2007
	Building Societies (Funding) and Mutual Societies (Transfers) Act 2007

Crossrail Bill (Carry-over)

[Relevant document: First Special Report of the Crossrail Bill Committee, Session 2006-07, on the Crossrail Bill, HC 235.]

Tom Harris: I beg to move,
	That further proceedings on the Crossrail Bill shall be suspended until the next Session of Parliament:
	That if a Bill is presented in the next Session in the same terms as those in which the Crossrail Bill stood when proceedings on it were suspended in this Session—
	(a) the Bill shall be ordered to be printed and shall be deemed to have been read the first time and second time; and
	(b) the Bill shall be deemed to have been reported from the Select Committee and to have been re-committed to a Public Bill Committee; and
	(c) the Standing Orders and practice of the House applicable to the Bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in this Session or in the Session 2005-06 or 2004-05 shall be deemed to have complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in the next Session.
	That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.
	This motion is technical in nature, and will ensure that the Crossrail Bill continues into the next Session. If enacted, the Bill will allow for the construction of the scheme. It is a hybrid Bill. It was introduced on 22 February 2005 and received its Second Reading on 19 July 2005 with a majority of 375. The Select Committee, ably chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale), commenced its work on 17 January 2006 and completed its—unenviable—task on 16 October 2007, having convened for an impressive 84 sitting days, including a few evenings, and having considered more than 200 petitions. I am sure the whole House will once again join me in thanking the Committee, as well as the Clerks,  Hansard reporters and doorkeepers, for their dedication, professionalism and enthusiasm during the past 21 months.
	The motion's purpose is simple. It will ensure that the Bill can be carried over for consideration in the next Session and that all the work that I have briefly described is not wasted. Carrying a Bill over from one Session to another is, of course, well precedented; indeed, this Bill has already been carried over from one Parliament to another.
	If the motion is passed, there will be no curtailing of scrutiny in the next Session. There will be the usual opportunities for Members to consider the Bill line by line during the Public Bill Committee stage. Allocation of places on the Committee will be on a first come, first served basis. I urge Members to speak to their Whips as soon as possible if they wish to secure a place. I can say with confidence that the Committee's deliberations will be measured in days or weeks, rather than months.
	Whatever outstanding reservations Members might have about aspects of the project, I do not believe that anyone wants the Bill to be infinitely delayed or, worse still, cancelled, which is what could happen if they object to the motion before us today. I remind the House that there will be a Select Committee in another place to consider remaining concerns of petitioners. With that in mind, I commend the motion to the House.

Stephen Hammond: London is the global city: it is the city of world finance, international tourism and the 2012 Olympics. It competes not nationally or continentally, but internationally and globally, and it therefore needs infrastructure of the highest global stature and highest standard.
	I note that this debate can continue until 10 o'clock. An invitation to speak is a temptation to politicians, and the carry-over motion debate in the last Session unexpectedly lasted for two and a half hours. We should resist that temptation this afternoon.
	Earlier today in the House, the Secretary of State for Transport said that Crossrail was a triumph for this Government, and it is certainly the case that if the Bill is enacted that will be a triumph for them. However, I should add that that was a failure for a predecessor Labour Government, because such a project was first mooted in 1948—in order to alleviate overcrowding on the Circle and Central lines, which might prompt some participants in today's debates to say, "Plus ça change."
	This motion commits the Bill to Committee. We have been there several times before, and let us hope that this Committee stage is more fruitful and that Crossrail is built and being used in 13 years' time—which is how long ago the last Committee stage was—and not just being talked about.
	As the Minister also said, the motion is essentially non-controversial and aims to carry the Bill over into the next Session. The Bill proves the convention that hybrid Bills usually last for more than one Session; this one is probably close to creating records because, as he has said, it has spanned not only one Session but one Parliament. Conservative Members echo the thanks to the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale), his Committee and all colleagues who served on it.
	The Bill will have taken a long time to reach Committee when it does so in the next Session. In my short time in the House, we have had four debates on the Floor of the House on this and several major arguments, the first of which was over the location of stations—there will now be a station at Woolwich. There have also been arguments about the route—latterly, where to begin it and where to end—about where to have sheds and about funding: who, how much and when. The Government, the taxpayer, the fare box and business were always going to be involved in that, and with all due respect, the Government cannot escape the criticism of dalliance. The suggestion made in the previous Session that the financing be reviewed by Sir Michael Lyons was nothing more than a blind alley.
	A deal is now in place, but it will need examination and further clarity. Londoners are already wondering how large the sum is on the cheque that the Mayor has written on their bank accounts. I hope that the Minister will listen carefully and that we will be able to explore the deal carefully in Committee. I am glad that he is making a note of that.
	Throughout the parliamentary process, the Conservative party's position has been to back Crossrail in principle and to ensure that the Bill's passage through its parliamentary process is as quick as we can possibly allow it to be. That was our position and will remain so. We look forward to Committee, Report and Third Reading. We want those to be swift so that the mental work that has been done on this vital piece of infrastructure can be reflected in the physical work that needs to commence. We support the carry-over motion.

Nick Raynsford: I do not intend to detain the House for any length of time, but it is right that a few additional comments should be made in support of the carry-over motion. I agree with the Minister's proposal and his remarks about the importance of the Crossrail scheme and the good progress that is being made. I emphasise how vital it is for the future of not only London and its economy, but the whole country. There is little doubt that without Crossrail, transport and traffic in London would grind to gridlock within a short time. Crossrail is vital to the long-term success of our capital city and the economy of our whole country, so it is good news that the scheme is progressing and that a firm timetable is in place to ensure that trains will begin to run from 2017.
	I agree with the tribute that the Minister paid to the members of the Select Committee and to its Chairman, because they have done a magnificent job. They have had to put a great deal of time into this—84 sittings and more than 18 months' work, which is hard work by any standard—and they have made a significant impact. As the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) mentioned, their stalwart efforts have resulted in a station at Woolwich; it is now an integral part of this scheme and that was not the case when the Bill was first presented. It is essential to Crossrail, vital for the regeneration of the Thames Gateway and will be a considerable net contributor to the scheme because, as the Committee pointed out, the cost-benefit analysis is particularly favourable in respect of Woolwich. Common sense has prevailed, and the Select Committee has done its job successfully in ensuring that this provision is incorporated in the Bill. That is warmly welcomed in south-east London. I am pleased to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) is present, because I know that he, too, will wish to congratulate all involved in this progress.
	The final comment that I wish to make concerns the funding package. Major progress was made in the recent announcements by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, in his pre-Budget statement, about the funding basis for Crossrail. The hon. Member for Wimbledon was a little churlish about Sir Michael Lyons, because his report came forward with the proposal for the supplementary business rate, which is an integral part of Crossrail's funding package and has made this possible. It is a big project and the funding is substantial, so it is right that the package should be robust. By seeking support from several different parties, rather than having the cost all falling on the public purse, we have a better prospect of ensuring that the scheme proceeds and is properly funded.
	I congratulate the Government on reaching this stage, and the Committee on its magnificent work. I wish the Bill well in its progress to the statute book and the process of constructing this hugely important new rail link in London.

Tom Brake: I echo the Minister's comments about the good work done by the Committee. Remarkably, my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), whom I appointed to serve on the Committee on our behalf, still speaks to me. I give credit to the Committee for ensuring that its work has been relevant and suitably challenging.
	I could, I suppose, spend some time giving a brief history of Crossrail, although perhaps not going back to 1948. Suffice it to say that perhaps the most recent emergence of Crossrail was back in 1989, with the central London rail study, which was, regrettably, rejected in 1994 by the then Conservative Government. However, to give them credit, they did ensure that there were protected alignments, so that when the project re-emerged, the route was safeguarded. That was very welcome.
	I agree with the Chancellor that Crossrail is essential for the competitiveness not just of the City of London, but of the whole country. I certainly welcome the progress that has been made to date, and I would not want to impede that progress. However, just as the Committee states in the conclusion to its report on page 56 that it is
	"concerned that members of the public may struggle to locate information that is relevant to them",
	hon. Members may have struggled to identify information that is of concern to them, especially about the financial framework that has been put in place to ensure that Crossrail proceeds. I hope that when the Minister responds, he will be able to give us some reassurance on that point. For example, the pre-Budget statement refers to the resources that were allocated in the comprehensive spending review to allow the commencement of the main construction of Crossrail. I hope that the Minister can confirm that the phrase "main construction" is simply used to demonstrate the phases in which the work will be done, which would start with the main construction, and is not an indication that all that will be affordable is the main construction, and other components might not be afforded. I hope that the Minister will confirm that that does not represent wriggle room for delivering only part of the project, not the totality of it.
	The pre-Budget statement also contains a reference to the Department for Transport contributing around one third of the total estimated cost of up to £16 billion. Is there a defined upper limit on that contribution, given that the statement is a little vague about the Department's contribution? We need clarity on the £16 billion and where the funding will come from. It is regrettable that hon. Members have had to try to piece together the financial framework from different sources—principally the media—as opposed to having a clear breakdown. My understanding—and I hope that the Minister will confirm it—is that £5 billion will come from Government grants, as stated in the PBS—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am reluctant to stop the hon. Gentleman, but he is now giving the Minister a shopping list and may be leading him astray. I remind the hon. Gentleman, and anyone else who may wish to contribute, that this is a carry-over motion and comments should be restricted to whether the Bill should or should not be carried over.

Tom Brake: Thank you for that intervention, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My point is that the Minister is seeking the House's support for the motion that would enable the Bill to be carried over, but to get it he must set out Crossrail's financial framework. I shall be very brief, but we know about the £5 billion from Government grants and the £5 billion from the supplementary business rate, and about the £5 billion that will be borrowed against Crossrail's fare takings from 2017. We understand that the Secretary of State secured an additional £1 billion from the City, and that that comprises £300 million extra from the City of London, £400 million from Canary Wharf and a contribution from BAA.
	I hope that the Minister will confirm that that information is correct, as it is key to whether the House should support the Bill being carried over. I do not see how the project could proceed if the financial package is not in place.
	Crossrail is desperately needed in London. It will provide the heart bypass operation that London's transport system needs, and offer people another transport route that will mean that they do not have to rely on the heavily congested arteries that exist already. When he responds, I hope that the Minister will be able to satisfy us about the financial package that stands behind the Crossrail project, as that will enable us to make progress and to approve the Bill being carried over into the next Session.

Clive Efford: Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), I want to congratulate a number of people who have been responsible for getting us to this point. First, I should like to offer my warm thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister, who has approached the matter in such a friendly and open-minded way. All of us in south-east London are delighted that the Government have finally accepted the force of our argument that there should be a station at Woolwich, and that that station is now included in the scheme.
	I should also like to congratulate the members of the Committee—and in particular its Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale)—on the way that they carried out their deliberations and took on board the arguments from the south-east London community about how essential a station at Woolwich is. I should also like to put on record my congratulations to my local authority of Greenwich. Working with local people, it has led the campaign and also brought the business community on board. We would not be celebrating today without the contribution made by those who will benefit directly from the development of a station at Woolwich.
	I should also like to put on record my congratulations to the Mayor of London, who has fought so hard for Crossrail. His support for a station at Woolwich may have been a bit belated, but he got there in the end. We never tire of saying that the score is now 3-0 to Greenwich on major infrastructure projects: we won the arguments on the docklands light railway and the Jubilee line, and now we have won the one about Crossrail.
	The Crossrail project is essential to Woolwich's development as a hub for my community in south-east London and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich said, for the country's economy. The scheme must go ahead.
	I shall end with a question for the Minister. I am grateful for the written answer that I received today, the final paragraph of which states:
	"Main construction of the scheme would begin in 2010, and we expect the first trains to run in 2017 as part of a 12-month build up to the full Crossrail service."
	I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me, but we in south-east London are a bit sensitive and are aware that words are open to interpretation. When he responds to the debate, can he confirm that the full Crossrail service will include the south-east extension and the station at Woolwich? I know that it will, but it would be nice to have that on the record.
	In conclusion, I congratulate everyone who has brought us to this juncture. Finally, the south-east extension and a station at Woolwich are fully part of the Crossrail scheme.

Mark Field: For a project that is unlikely to cost less than £16 billion, ongoing questions about the need for Crossrail are legitimate. At a time when the Government have slashed plans for large-scale tram and train-link programmes outside London and the south-east, the amount being put into London might seem perverse. As a London Member, I have always supported Crossrail, but it is important that we go through the arguments at this juncture. My constituents ask, "Why on earth do we need to have a further link running across central London?" There are relatively few votes in this issue for me or, I suspect, for any other London Member. Constituents who live in the firing line are perhaps rightly fearful of disruption, damage and inconvenience when the project is finally built.
	I believe, however, that there is a great need in central London for the project, not least because of the big problems with capacity. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) pointed out, the project has been mooted for well over half a century, and only the Bakerloo line is running at less than full capacity. To return to the point made by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), a number of other tube lines have been extended north and south over the central area in the past 30 or so years. However, it is not practical simply to extend branch lines and bring more people into central London without the capacity-building that Crossrail will offer. It will be a proper addition to the infrastructure within the central district of the City and the zone 1 area, including the west end, which is increasingly important in commercial terms.
	The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington rightly makes the case about funding, but in previous Sessions the funding package was by no means in place. Indeed, the numbers being bandied around at that juncture were £10 billion to £13 billion, which makes me all the more sceptical about whether the project will necessarily remain within the budget of £16 million. That is the way of things with large-scale infrastructure projects.
	I am sure that the Minister will have something to say about funding, but it appears that it is finally in place. The City of London corporation provided the vital piece in the jigsaw at its meeting at the beginning of October, although I appreciate that there are concerns about the precipitate decision that was required by the Treasury. However, it was always clear that a fairly substantial financial contribution would be required. My understanding is that there will be a one-off lump sum of £200 million and that the City of London corporation will lead efforts to raise a further £150 million from the City's financial sector.

Tom Brake: The fact that the hon. Gentleman is using figures that are slightly different from mine reinforces the need for the Minister to provide some clarity. Members need to know that the financial package that has been put in place will be recession-proof. Until we see the figures, we do not know what we are dealing with.

Mark Field: That is a legitimate point, but the discussion has been going on for some years without any firm funding being in place.
	I also pay tribute to Canary Wharf, which is putting up a considerable sum—a rather larger sum than the City of London corporation, if rumours are to be believed. It will receive the benefit of a station in the Billingsgate market district of Canary Wharf, and that will undoubtedly make an immense difference to Canary Wharf's capacity to build to the south and on South Quay. There will be a proper transport network for all those who wish to work or, indeed, play in that part of London.
	The right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) pointed out the immense value of getting the transport infrastructure right. Although I am reasonably sceptical of the figures being bandied about, there are estimates that City businesses lose more than £1 million a day because of transport delays. The net benefit of Crossrail will apparently be £30 billion over the next 60 years, and that does not even include its contribution to taxation. I accept that the figures might have been plucked from the sky, but it is essential to compare them with the large costs that will be incurred. The project will also help to create great prosperity and, as others Members have pointed out, the economic success of central London is essential. All recent surveys of businesses within central London have put transport failings and, in particular, public transport failings at the top of the wish-list of problems to be overcome. Crossrail is a positive step forward.
	You, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will forgive me for touching on one last point. I have ongoing concerns, on behalf of my constituents, about the route. I have discussed my concerns on many occasions, and many petitioners have had the opportunity to put their case during previous deliberations. The process will, no doubt, continue as the Bill goes to the House of Lords and proceeds through its stages, assuming that the carry-over motion is agreed today.
	Without the funding, there was a big risk of a blight on the entire area—a risk that predates our discussions on the Bill. In many ways, it goes back to 1994, when various reserved areas were put in place. That has made life difficult for people living in Mayfair, the Barbican and Bayswater in my constituency, and, I suspect, for people in many other parts of London. They felt that the prospect of those works would lessen the value of their properties, and that a great deal of disruption was likely in the districts in which they lived. I hope that the Bill will move on with great speed. Clearly, there will be great inconvenience for many people who live in central London, or in the other parts of London that will be affected, but the benefits will be terrific in the years ahead. I am glad that Members of Parliament across the House, who perhaps recognise that there will be relatively few votes in the issue come election time, accept that there will be a greater benefit to the capital, and to the commercial and economic interests of the country.

Peter Soulsby: I support the carry-over motion. It is no coincidence that, as Members reminded us, the Select Committee on the Crossrail Bill submitted its report to the House today. I am one of the 10 Members who served on that Committee for the best part of two years. I hope that it will not disappoint the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) too much if I do not entirely take his suggestion that we should resist the opportunity to speak. I will speak on the Bill, at least for a little while, as it has been such a major part of our lives for so long.
	I hope that in this debate on the carry-over motion, you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will permit me to talk a little about the work of the Committee, and the strengths and weaknesses of the way in which that work was undertaken, because I think that it might help right hon. and hon. Members if they understand how we came to be at this stage and the work that we have done. Of course, I share the Minister's hope that that work will not prove to have been wasted. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) reminded us that the House had a Crossrail Bill before it on a previous occasion—the Crossrail Bill that collapsed in 1994. Those of us who have spent the best part of two years on the Bill that we are discussing today will want it to fare better than the other Bill did, and will not want it to collapse. Of course, we are very much heartened in that hope by the fact that the Government have given such a firm commitment to the scheme, seem to have a credible funding package in place, and seem determined not to let the Bill collapse, as its predecessor did. Those of us who have spent so long living with the Bill feel that that makes our efforts appear worth while.
	Undoubtedly, Crossrail is an exciting scheme. The Minister used the word "unenviable" when he described our task, and I have to say that sometimes in the past two years it has not seemed quite so exciting. Since 19 January 2005, we have met to discuss the Bill up to eight times a week, and sometimes during parliamentary recesses. There were 84 days of public meetings, and sometimes there were three separate sittings a day. We have considered 205 petitions in total. That has not always seemed exciting. There was a mountain of paperwork. We had to consider some 413 written submissions, and evidence bundles began to fill Committee Room 5. At times, rather than feeling enthusiasm for the project, we felt somewhat disheartened and rather irritated by the process to which we were subjected.
	I am afraid that I will speak for a little while longer. I want to begin by considering the way in which the members of the Committee were selected. Those right hon. and hon. Members who have had a chance to have a look at our—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hate to reduce the hon. Gentleman's time addressing the House, but we do not need to go down that line at this stage unless it is very pertinent to why the Bill should be carried over.

Peter Soulsby: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I entirely accept your guidance on that matter. There will no doubt be other occasions on which I shall be able to refer to that strange and unsatisfactory part of the process.
	We as a Committee were charged with a quasi-judicial role in relation to the Bill. We provided an audience for petitioners, and we were successful in concentrating the efforts of the promoters and the petitioners to reach agreement, often outside the Committee Room, and in taking a view of the particular circumstances of those who petitioned against the Bill. That enabled us to make sensible proposals with regard, for example, to the traders in Smithfield, whose situation is undoubtedly different from that of many other traders who might be affected by a similar Bill.
	As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) reminded us, we had the opportunity to argue forcefully and successfully, supported by him and other right hon. and hon. Members, for the station at Woolwich, and we proposed amendments to the Bill to enable a station to be built. We picked up a wide range of other issues, some as major and significant as the way in which Liverpool Street station should be modified, and some apparently trivial but important to the people affected by them, such as how people's back gardens would be affected and whether a couple of metres of land should be taken. That may be significant to them, but not of the same significance to the scheme as matters such as Liverpool Street.
	We have been able to respond appropriately to the cases put to us. To some extent we were hindered by the fact that the Committee can only be reactive in its response. It sits, essentially, to hear petitions and respond to petitioners against the Bill. It cannot be proactive. Although we took opportunities to make visits and to examine more generally some of the matters before us, issues about how hybrid Bill Committees operate could usefully be re-examined in the light of our experience, before a similar scheme comes before the House, possibly after a gap of some 10 years, as with the present Bill.
	As is evident from our report, we hope that the Committee in the Lords will consider the fundamental issue of the public, Members of the House and, ultimately, Members in another place fully understanding what the Bill requires, as opposed to what it permits. We as a Committee felt that a list of amendments and undertakings was not sufficient. There should be an opportunity for Members and the public to gain a better understanding of what is permitted and what is required by the Bill.
	I gave one example when I referred to Liverpool Street station. Although the Committee was anxious that that should be dealt with in a particular way, as a result of the process that we had gone through we could not be certain what would be delivered when the promoters built in the area. Similarly, the major triumph for the campaign for a station at Woolwich merely permits a station to be built there. In conjunction with that permission having been granted, the Government have gone to great lengths to ensure that an appropriate consortium is brought together and a funding package is made available to enable a station to be built, but it is not, as I understand it, a requirement of the Bill that such a station should be provided. That is an example of one of the issues that the Committee thought should be borne in mind both as the Bill continues its passage and more generally when we consider how hybrid Bills are dealt with in future.
	It would have been useful if the Committee had had an opportunity, like Public Bill Committees, to hear evidence on some of the issues. We could have done so in respect of ground-borne noise, the compensation code, freight—we have specifically suggested that the other place might wish to consider freight—or whether a floating-slab track was appropriate. Such issues could usefully have been the subject of evidence sittings at the outset. Those sittings would have enormously helped the Committee to consider the significant number of petitions, although we did do that, and to do its job consistently throughout the process. They would have enabled Members who could not attend all sittings to understand the wider picture.
	The Committee has come to the end of the process and we are enormously grateful for the support of the staff of the House: the Clerks—particularly the excellent Committee Assistants—and the various parts of the House administration, which have helped our work. We were enormously helped by the promoter's counsel, who enabled us to understand some of the issues that in an ideal world we would have wished to explore independently. They helped us to make the system work flexibly.
	As I hinted earlier, there are issues for the House on how Committees dealing with hybrid Bills should be appointed in future. There are questions about the powers given to them and—as is evident in our report—about the instructions given to them. I hope that despite those issues, the House will feel that we have done our work conscientiously, well and thoroughly. I hope that we have helped reassure the House that the Bill can be carried over with confidence.
	It is appropriate that the carry-over motion should have come from the Committee, with our report, to the House, and that backing and funding should be being given just as the last hybrid Bill to have been successfully steered through the House—that for the channel tunnel rail link—is having such a dramatic impact at St. Pancras, where the link will soon open. I speak with confidence on behalf of the majority of the Committee's members in saying that I hope that what we have produced in the past two years to take forward the Crossrail Bill will ultimately result in something that will equal the importance of the channel tunnel rail link—not only to London, but to the infrastructure of the United Kingdom in general.

Simon Hughes: I am another veteran of the saga—and, indeed, of the Jubilee line extension process, the saga before it, which involved a private Bill and carry-over, and lasted a long time. We all owe colleagues who volunteer or are volunteered to serve on such Bills our thanks, and we do that without exception in this case. They have no direct interest, as the issues do not bring constituency benefits.
	I support the motion. With this sort of measure, it is imperative that the job is done properly, which requires use of the system for carrying Bills from one Session to the next. That is what has been proposed and it has the unqualified support of all the voices that I have heard so far from around the House.
	I should like to add three things about what remains to be done in the continuing debate and about why we need to complete that debate. First, we need to follow up the questions about funding posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field). The Bill is about plans and powers to build, but it does not automatically deliver the money to build—that has to come from elsewhere. The worst possible outcome would be that we carried the Bill over to the next Session, it completed its stages in Parliament and received Royal Assent, and there then remained some uncertainty about funding. There has always been Government resistance to this being a publicly funded enterprise, for reasons that I understand. It is welcome that the City of London recently announced that it is going to contribute and that the Canary Wharf company has put something into the kitty, as it did for the Jubilee line extension. Given that this is a private Bill, which is not quite the same as a Government Bill albeit that it has Government backing, I hope that the Minister will say that as well as Government support for the process he will offer his Department's support to ensure that the funding continues to come together so that by the time the Bill receives Royal Assent we will know the funding is in place.

Stephen Hammond: I assume that the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends agree that it is essential that when we get the Bill into Committee we are allowed to examine the funding package. I hope that the Minister will give that reassurance.

Simon Hughes: I entirely agree, and my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington and I deduce that the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field), who is my parliamentary neighbour, believes that too.

Tom Brake: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is not only the potential scenario whereby the funding package is not agreed but one whereby part of the funding package is provided to enable the main construction to happen, perhaps the tunnel from Liverpool Street to Paddington, but not to complete the extremities?

Simon Hughes: That element is absolutely imperative. I see the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) in his place. This proposal is not just for Paddington to Liverpool Street—it is to link the lines west of Paddington and the places east of Liverpool Street, and it has to be a complete package.
	Secondly, the timing of this carry-over motion is intriguing. We might have had it as one of the last bits of business this Session with a general election coming the day after. We had an announcement by the Prime Minister and others on the Friday before the famous Saturday when Mr. Andrew Marr told the nation that we were not going to have a general election: a slightly odd ambassador for the Prime Minister, but there we are; cometh the hour, cometh the man. On that day, the Prime Minister was very clear that the funding was in place. A week later, the Mayor of London appeared to be rewriting the funding script in a press conference at City hall. Will the Minister not only give the undertaking that funding can be examined in Committee but ensure that by the time we start that process he has had all the key players round the table to ensure that the Government are satisfied that our London regional government, the private sector contributors and the UK Government have all their ducks in a row?
	Thirdly, this is potentially a momentous year for London Transport because we are about to see the opening of the cross-channel rail link in its new terminus. I have to say that that particularly disadvantages my constituents and those of my neighbours, because getting to Waterloo is fantastically easy and convenient, as indeed it is from here, whereas getting to St. Pancras is less easy and convenient. However, we fought that battle and the die has been cast. If that opens on schedule, as I hope it will—I think that it is all teed up to happen—it is important that we have not only the international connections but the national connections east, west, north and south. Some of us have always said—I deduce it in the words of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster—that this cannot be done without giving thought to the communities who live along the line covered by the Bill. The Minister will know, although it is not his particular responsibility, that we have had the mother and father of battles south of the river to ensure that the Thameslink proposal—a north-south access route to improve travel through London, which was originally called Thameslink 2000, and is a good proposal in principle—did not have a major destructive impact on the area around Borough market in my constituency, which is a conservation area and an historic part of central London. I am still not convinced that what is proposed will satisfy the double requirement of the national interest and the local one.
	If the Crossrail Bill is to be carried over and receive Royal Assent, it is a prerequisite that the interests of the communities that bear the burden of construction, and the disruption that it will cause, are properly heeded. It is no good having a fantastic line under London, with great east-west links from one side to the other, while the centre of London is disrupted unrealistically and excessively in the interim. By definition, there will be huge disruption during the next few years because of the Olympics, which I support. There will be the works for the north-south Thameslink route, and there has been work on the St. Pancras line. Crossrail is a good project, but the money needs to be in place, and the communities affected should experience minimal disruption and receive some of the benefit.
	Crossrail is a line of benefit to London and the United Kingdom as a whole. I wish it well, but there are significant remaining questions to be answered.

Martin Salter: I rise, as other hon. Members have, to support the carry-over motion. None of my comments should be construed in any other sense than that I am really pleased for my colleagues in south-east London, and I congratulate them on their successful campaign for the Woolwich station. It will enhance the Crossrail scheme, and I am pleased that the Committee has gone down that route.
	I am delighted for London as a whole, but as a Reading Member, hon. Members would expect me to express some disappointment that the Committee report makes scant reference to the evidence given by the hon. Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) and myself, petitioners from the Reading area, and the Thames Valley chamber of commerce. In fact, I was somewhat surprised to find that the Select Committee report is incorrect, and one of my reasons for speaking today is that I wish to put that fact on the record. The report refers to:
	"Petition No. 65 — Michael Salter MP"
	and goes on to refer to the Olympic games and the funding package. Actually, my evidence on 5 July did not touch on any of those subjects. My evidence resulted from a petition that I presented on behalf of the Reading  Evening Post, and major businesses in the Reading area, including employers such as Microsoft, Foster Wheeler Energy, Yell, MCI, Reading borough council, Reading chamber of commerce, Transport 2000 and around 250 local businesses, residents and commuters. The petition was quite clear. It says:
	"We the undersigned are concerned that the Crossrail Bill currently before Parliament includes provision for the western terminus to be located at Maidenhead rather than Reading and that no provision is made for a western rail link to Heathrow airport. It is our view that these two measures would yield significant benefits to the Reading area and enable Crossrail to properly realise objectives to "connect the UK". We also urge Parliament to ensure that the final Crossrail scheme does not impede the current high speed rail services into Paddington from Reading and the West."
	On the summary page of the Committee's report it says, quite clearly:
	"The Committee has only commented on cases where it deemed necessary. It all other cases, the Committee was satisfied with the undertakings and assurances offered by the Promoter to the Petitioner."
	No member of the Select Committee who was present on 5 July can have been in any doubt that there was a serious question mark over the assurances and undertakings given by the promoter, because there is no case for locating a western terminus for Crossrail at Maidenhead. The motto of Crossrail was, from memory, "Crossing the capital, connecting the UK". I have no beef with Maidenhead, but one cannot connect anywhere with it. Reading is the second busiest station outside London, and is second only to Birmingham New Street in that regard. It is a major rail hub.
	If there is to be a terminus significantly west of London, it has to be in Reading. The hon. Member for Reading, East, other petitioners and I made the point that Crossrail is a stopping service. We currently enjoy a good, fast, high-speed train service into London from the west. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) is nodding, and I know that hon. Members from Bristol and Wales share our concern. If a stopping service from Maidenhead interrupts the successful high-speed service into London from the west, Crossrail will impede a major transport artery.
	If Crossrail comes west of Paddington or Ealing Broadway, it should go to Reading. However, it can come to Reading only if we upgrade the infrastructure. That case was made on 5 July and should have been included in the Select Committee report, but has not been. That is regrettable.
	I want briefly to consider the potential rail link to London Heathrow. It is nonsense that Reading, which is at the heart of silicon valley—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is rehearsing arguments that have probably been heard previously. He knows that he must relate his remarks to why the Bill should or should not be carried over. Perhaps he would like to do that.

Martin Salter: Certainly, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am speaking about paragraph (b) of the motion, which states that
	"the Bill shall be deemed to have been reported from the Select Committee",
	but the Select Committee report fails to mention the packs that were given in evidence.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has already been able to put that on record. He has dealt with the matter. He should now talk about whether the Bill should be carried over.

Martin Salter: Notwithstanding the fact that the arguments for a western rail link into Heathrow airport have not been made in the Select Committee report although they were made in the evidence session on 5 July, the Bill should be carried over, because Crossrail is a vital infrastructure project for Reading. All that Reading Members and the community of Reading want to achieve is to ensure that if the scheme comes to Reading, it should happen in a proper, co-ordinated way. If it does not come to Reading, that will be an opportunity lost. However, for goodness' sake, let us not destroy our effective high-speed train service into London Paddington from the west.

Robert Wilson: I support the carry-over motion. I thank hon. Members who served on the Select Committee; it must have been a thankless, albeit important task. However, I slightly admonish that Committee's members because they did not do justice to the petitions from interested parties from Reading that were presented to the Committee.
	Reading station is at the heart of my constituency. Although the Bill cannot now consider Reading as the western terminus, we should take the opportunity, whenever Ministers with responsibility for the subject are in the Chamber, to remind them of the importance of Reading being the terminus. It is also important to remind them that there is a method of getting the terminus to Reading: it can be done through an order under section 1 of the Transport and Works Act 1992. I hope that in due course the Under-Secretary will appreciate the force of the arguments that the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) and I, and others from the Reading area, presented. Indeed, many Members of Parliament with constituencies west of London made representations, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May), who does not want the western terminus to be at Maidenhead, and sees the sense of it being at Reading. Maidenhead is a ludicrous end point; Reading is a far more appropriate place for the western terminus.
	Another important point, which has already been made, is that siting the western terminus at Reading could be combined with a link into Heathrow from the west. Indeed, the upgrading of Reading station, which will happen in future, will be Crossrail-proof, and prepared for a link into Heathrow.
	I support the carry-over motion.

Tom Harris: With the leave of the House, I would like to respond to as many as possible of the points that have been made in this short debate. First, I thank the hon. Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) for the support that he and his party have given the Crossrail Bill. Being able to make cross-party comments and secure cross-party support for such an important Bill has certainly made my job an awful lot easier. However, I take issue with him on a couple of points. It is rather unfair to blame the late Earl Attlee for any failure in previous Crossrail Bills. If we are looking for historical precedents, I suggest that the Crossrail Bill that fell in 1994 is perhaps a more accurate one.

Stephen Hammond: In the interests of ensuring that history is correct, the Minister will therefore want to say that when that Bill fell, it fell in Committee, and that it was Labour Members who voted against it.

Tom Harris: That was before either of us was a Member of the House, so I will move swiftly on.
	The hon. Gentleman made one critical remark about previous comments that ministerial colleagues and I have made about the importance of the Lyons review of local government finance, which was raised when I first spoke about Crossrail on 31 October last year. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) correctly said, it was always important that the Lyons review was put behind us and that we had its conclusions before us, so that we could see exactly what the structure of local government finance was before we set about constructing a financing package. An important part of the Lyons review was the possible introduction of the supplementary business rate. I will say something about that later, but obviously I do not want to dwell too much on the detail, rather than on why we wish to carry over the Bill.
	My right hon. Friend again paid tribute to the Crossrail Bill Committee, and I echo that tribute. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) talked about the importance of Crossrail to the competitiveness of our capital city. He also talked about his concern about public information, which is a valid point. The Government must learn from the experience of the past two to three years the importance of getting accurate information to the public timeously, so that they can be reassured about whatever effect the construction phase of Crossrail in particular will have on local communities.

Tom Brake: I thank the Minister for picking up on that point. Do the Government already have any proposals in mind about how they would make information more readily available?

Tom Harris: I cannot offer any specific details today, but I will be more than happy to follow that point up in Committee.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about the main construction. I can confirm that the main construction of Crossrail referred to previously involves everything down to the light bulbs. "Main construction" means exactly what it says—the full construction of the Crossrail scheme. He asked about the Department for Transport's contribution to financing. The figure of £16 billion is now well established. I have absolutely no reason not to believe that the figure is robust, as figures for previous capital projects arguably have not been. I would be extremely disappointed if the huge amount of work already carried out has led us to anything other than a reliable end figure for the total cost of the construction of Crossrail, of about £16 billion in outturn figures.
	The hon. Gentleman referred to Crossrail as London's heart bypass. That is a phrase that I like a great deal, and which I will now pilfer from him and use as if it were my own. To return to the finance package—the hon. Member for Wimbledon asked about this as well—the financing of the Crossrail scheme is not part of the Bill that will come before the Public Bill Committee, which will sit next month. I therefore cannot guarantee that detailed discussions can take place in Committee. That would not be a matter for me, but for the Chairman of the Public Bill Committee.
	I would, however, like to take this opportunity to clarify one aspect of the financing. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington talked about the three-way split between the DFT contribution, the fare payers' contribution and, as he said, the supplementary business rate. The third part is in fact the supplementary business rate and contributions from the Corporation of London and other City institutions. Much of the detail of the agreements with third parties is covered by confidentiality agreements to protect their commercial interests, and I hope that hon. Members will understand that I do not want to commit to giving any more details at this stage. However, when such details become available, I will be happy to place them in the Library.

Stephen Hammond: We were seeking to discuss those matters in Committee to obtain reassurances about the robustness of the funding package, notwithstanding what the Minister has already said. I hear what he says about those matters not being part of the Bill that will be before the Committee. Will he therefore give some thought to allowing the Committee to avail itself of its facility to take independent evidence at the start, and to seeking the Committee Chairman's approval to hear such evidence on funding? Alternatively, will he agree to have a meeting with me and the representative of the Liberal party to reassure us about the funding?

Tom Harris: Those are productive, positive suggestions. It is not for me or for the Government to decide how the Public Bill Committee stage should be structured, but I would be more than happy to invite the hon. Gentleman and the representative of the Liberal party to hold exactly that kind of discussion. Ever since I took over this remit, I have tried to involve the hon. Gentleman and to make our deliberations as cross-party as possible. I believe that that is to the benefit of the project, and I am more than happy to place it on the record that I will try to effect the opportunity that he has proposed.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) paid tribute to the Committee and welcomed the Government's previous commitment to building a station at Woolwich. He also asked for reassurance on the south-east arm of Crossrail to Abbey Wood. He will have to learn to accept yes for an answer. The full construction of Crossrail will take place at the same time. We expect services to begin in 2007, with a steady increase over the next 12 months. Those will include services to Abbey Wood.
	The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) has expressed a great deal of interest in the project from the beginning. He has been a critical supporter of it, for obvious reasons, and has expressed particular concern for his own constituency interests, which is absolutely understandable. He also said that there were no votes in Crossrail for any Member whose constituency lay along the route. I will not pass comment on that, but whether Crossrail provides political advantage for any party is beside the point. It is the right thing to do for London and for the United Kingdom, and that is why it is going ahead.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Sir Peter Soulsby) is, I believe, the only member of the Select Committee present today. He is easily identifiable as a member of the Committee, as are all its members, by his pale skin. He gave us a taste of the work that the Committee had done, and suggested that that work had been carried out conscientiously, thoroughly and well. I agree with him on every point that he made.
	The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) also raised concerns about the finance package, and I hope that I have managed to address some of the points that he raised. As far as the Government are concerned, there is no uncertainty about the funding package for Crossrail; otherwise, the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would not have announced the go-ahead for the project on the date that the hon. Gentleman mentioned. I will not pass further comment on the suggestions that he made about the timing of that announcement.
	The hon. Gentleman also talked about the impact of Crossrail on local communities. The work of the Select Committee over the past 21 months or so has been specifically related to dealing with such concerns, and that has been done in a very robust and effective way. Of course, there will also be an opportunity for a Select Committee in the other place to hear any outstanding concerns from communities or businesses on the Crossrail route. The hon. Gentleman finished by saying how important Crossrail was to the United Kingdom as a whole. As a Scottish MP, I believe that it is vital to our capital city and to maintaining London's prominence in the financial market.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter) made some pertinent remarks before you asked him to curtail his comments, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I would say to him and to the hon. Member for Reading, East (Mr. Wilson) that I accept that the arguments for extending Crossrail westwards to Reading are persuasive. However, it is not the Government's intention to redraw the Bill as it stands at the moment. After many months of hard work, we have reached the stage at which we can almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, and at which the Bill will be given Royal Assent.
	However, it will be up to any future Government to decide, if they so wish, to extend Crossrail. We have already safeguarded the route from Abbey Wood down to Ebbsfleet, and we are considering whether similar action should be taken with regard to the route west from Maidenhead to Reading. We will make an announcement on that shortly. It is not in the interest of the Bill substantially to alter the principle behind it by extending the route westward from Maidenhead to Reading at this stage. I understand why the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) might feel disappointed at that, but I hope that all hon. Members will understand that we need to grasp this opportunity to get a Crossrail Bill through Parliament.

Martin Salter: Members representing Maidenhead, the two Reading constituencies and other points west of London understand the Minister's reluctance to impede the Bill's progress, but will he tell us whether anything in the process following the passing of the legislation would allow Crossrail to terminate at a point further east than Maidenhead, with the possibility of a further review of a western terminus at a later date?

Tom Harris: I am afraid that the answer is no. I do not want to encourage the House to believe that we could reopen this issue and readdress the principle behind the Bill following its passage through Parliament. It will be for a future Government and a future rail Minister to decide whether such changes should be made. I can reassure my hon. Friend, however, that, because Crossrail services will be commuter services, they will use the slow lines out of Maidenhead into Paddington. I would not therefore expect the fast services from Reading to be impeded.

Theresa May: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way to me, especially as I have been present in the Chamber only for a short time. He has mentioned the benefits of Crossrail. If the service runs on the slow lines and Maidenhead becomes the end of a sort of metro, my constituents will not benefit from Crossrail. It will double the length of time that it takes them to travel from Maidenhead to Paddington. It would make sense for Maidenhead, Reading and the whole of east Berkshire if the line were to be extended to Reading.
	Will the Minister also clarify his response to the point just raised by the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter)? The hon. Gentleman asked whether it would be possible for the line to finish east of Maidenhead and then to be extended further to the west. He did not ask whether it could finish west of Maidenhead. I want to ensure that the Minister's answer was in response to that question, and not to the one that he might have thought that he heard.

Tom Harris: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Before the Minister responds to that last point, which I am happy for him to do, I must remind the House that we cannot open up the whole debate again. We are talking about the carry-over motion.

Tom Harris: You took the words right out of my mouth, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
	That subject has not been raised with me before, and I am more than happy to seek advice on the issue and to write to the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Reading, West.

Mark Field: I speak as someone who was brought up in Reading, although I am speaking for neither Reading, East nor Reading, West on this matter. Does the Minister not realise that to halt the route at Maidenhead would be to make a mockery of all that the Government are trying to do to achieve an integrated transport system, for the very reasons outlined by the hon. Member for Reading, West (Martin Salter)?

Tom Harris: I shall not pass judgment on the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. The principle of the Bill was decided by the House a long time ago, and I see no advantage either to the House or to the Crossrail project in reopening the issue at this stage.

Richard Younger-Ross: Will the Minister give way?

Tom Harris: The hon. Gentleman has not been present for any part of the debate, so I hope that he will forgive me if I now conclude my remarks.
	Several hon. Members have rightly commented on the impact that Crossrail will have on their local area. It will deliver significant economic benefits, but it is simply not possible to build a major construction project in a densely populated area such as London without there being some adverse impacts, albeit mainly temporary ones, on the people living and working near the intended route. We have sought throughout this process to reduce those impacts. We have set out in detail the environmental statement deposited with the Bill. In subsequent volumes, as the Bill has progressed and changes have been made to the scheme, we have set out what we expect the significant impacts to be, as well as our strategies for minimising them. The Government intend to publish a report on the environmental impacts in advance of Third Reading, to assist in determining the desirability of the project in the light of the measures that the Government have put in place.
	This has been a useful and informative debate. The contributions of colleagues on both sides of the House have not only reflected expressions of interest in the project, but made a serious contribution to knowledge of the issues. I look forward to similar debates here and, in due course, in Committee. In the meantime, I commend the motion to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That further proceedings on the Crossrail Bill shall be suspended until the next Session of Parliament:
	That if a Bill is presented in the next Session in the same terms as those in which the Crossrail Bill stood when proceedings on it were suspended in this Session—
	(a) the Bill shall be ordered to be printed and shall be deemed to have been read the
	first time and second time; and
	(b) the Bill shall be deemed to have been reported from the Select Committee and
	to have been re-committed to a Public Bill Committee; and
	(c) the Standing Orders and practice of the House applicable to the Bill, so far as complied with or dispensed with in this Session or in the Session 2005-06 or 2004-05 shall be deemed to have complied with or (as the case may be) dispensed with in the next Session.
	That these Orders be Standing Orders of the House.

House of Commons Members' Fund

Peter Lilley: I beg to move,
	That, pursuant to section 4(4) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1948 and section 1(4) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1957, in the year commencing 1st October 2007 there be appropriated for the purposes of section 4 of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1948:
	(1) The whole of the sums deducted or set aside in that year under section 1(3) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1939 from the salaries of Members of the House of Commons; and
	(2) The whole of the Treasury contribution to the Fund in that year.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the House of Commons Members' Fund (Custodian Trustee) motion:
	That, in pursuance of sections 2(1) and (2) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1939, Capita Trust Company Ltd. be appointed as custodian trustee in the room of the Public Trustee.

Peter Lilley: I will not detain the House for long on these motions and I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing us to debate them together.
	As hon. Members will know, the House of Commons Members' Fund is a benevolent fund that exists to provide support for former Members and their dependants, not least those who served before the House had any statutory pensions for MPs or their widows and dependants. Similar funds exist in most professions: what is unique about this fund is that it exists under its own rather arcane, ancient and out-of-date legislation. Two things are consequently required to be done, which explains why these measures are before us today.
	First, we are required annually to appropriate moneys available to the fund, which come from two sources, to the purposes for which the fund is set up. That is what the first motion does. The two sources of money are the monthly contributions of Members from their own salaries, of which they may well be largely unaware, and moneys made available from the Treasury. Under this measure, the moneys are appropriate to be used for the purposes that the fund has set up, namely to provide so-called as-of-right pensions, in particular for those who are widows or dependants of Members who served before pensions existed or widows of Members who retired before the widows' pension was raised on a discretionary basis. It is important to match any such increase in the widows' pension. In addition, there are discretionary funds of a modest nature made to a handful of cases brought to the fund annually. The former contributions are in the order of £2,000 a year—a very small or, to my mind, derisory amount for elderly widows. The average of discretionary contributions, which will need to be met, is about £5,000 in hardship cases of more recent retirees from the House.

Simon Hughes: I think that I have now understood the legal background. The question that posed itself when I was looking into the current facts is, given that that there are about 100 beneficiaries and that we are appropriating the whole of the two sources of money, is it in the discretion of the trustees, if they were so minded, to make much larger payments if that were felt necessary? One could contemplate a widow or widower or a former Member who retired many years ago being in pretty dire financial circumstances. To put it bluntly, £2,000 or even £5,000 might be helpful, but it would not solve the problem.

Peter Lilley: Yes, we can make larger discretionary payments. The as-of-right amount of settlement is agreed with the Treasury. I would like to see it raised, but that is not what the motion deals with or what we are debating now. A review of the whole fund is being undertaken. It may be that an agreement to increased amounts for the diminishing number of elderly widows will come out of that. However, we can, in addition, help individuals if they come to us with a specific need—for example, because of disability. We look sympathetically on those cases and have discretion to help them through the appropriation of these moneys over and above the as-of-right amount that they receive semi-automatically.

Simon Hughes: Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to be saying that the trustees can provide an additional top-up for the as-of-right beneficiaries, as well as giving a discretionary amount to people who are not as-of-right beneficiaries?

Peter Lilley: The hon. Gentleman is quite correct: we can and do act in that way in respect of specific beneficiaries who come to us with that sort of additional need. We always welcome hearing such cases where additional needs exist.
	The second feature of the legislation, which gives rise to the second motion, is the reference to there being a "custodian trustee". Up to now, the custodian trustee has been the Public Trustee office—now called the Official Solicitor and Public Trustee office. It now wishes to desist from involvement in this matter and has effectively resigned. The trustees have agreed that Capita Trustee Ltd. should replace that office as custodian trustee. The Official Solicitor and Public Trustee office has itself carried out a public tendering exercise and, by happy coincidence, reached the same conclusion—that Capital Trustee Ltd. should be the replacement body to carry out these functions. It may be some comfort to hon. Members to know that the trustees' judgment was supported by the Official Solicitor and Public Trustee office. Its judgment, which might be thought "interested" in that it wanted to get shot of this responsibility, was supported independently by the trustees. That explains the second motion. I commend both motions to the House.

Simon Hughes: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not know whether the Minister wishes to contribute immediately or at the end of the debate. It seems that she wants to do so now.

Helen Goodman: The right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) has fully set out the arguments behind the two motions. I urge the House to support them, but I also wanted to thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for his work as chairman of the trustees and to express my gratitude for all the work that the trustees do.

Simon Hughes: I will also be brief. I add my thanks to those of the Minister for the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) and his colleagues for discharging this function.
	I have two further questions—I had hoped to intervene to make my contribution even shorter—so let me deal with them in turn. First, in respect of the first motion and the fund as a whole, I understand that it currently stands at just above £4 million. By definition, the 100 beneficiaries are declining in number as they age. At the end of the exercise of this set of functions, will the money go back into a fund that will be available for other potential beneficiaries, will it go back to the Treasury or will it go somewhere else? From the papers I have read, I could not work out where the money would go once the duties of the trustees to these 100 beneficiaries have been fulfilled.
	Secondly, on the replacement custodian trustee, I have no fundamental disagreement with the judgment of the trustees, but a bell was ringing in my head when I saw who had been nominated to take over. It is a private sector company well known to many of us and this is clearly its trustee arm.
	Capita has not been uncontroversial in its intervention in public sector tendered activities; it does, and has done, huge amounts of work for local authorities. I think that the other arm of the company might still run London congestion charging, so it is well known across the country. It has had difficulties in the recent past: it is a matter of record that it was fined by the Financial Services Authority, and it accepted that and paid up. In addition to the tendering process done by the previous official custodian as official trustee, will the right hon. Gentleman confirm that our trustees, of whom he is an eminent chairman, satisfied themselves that the company was not only satisfactory simpliciter but the best available in the market—even if they did not undertake a tender process, as I understand it—and that any concerns about its past failures had been overcome, so that people could have confidence that it was entirely reputable and competent to do the job?

Theresa May: I simply want to make two points.
	First, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) referred to the fact that a review of the fund is taking place, which I welcome. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) might find that at least one of his points is addressed by that review. Secondly, I add my thanks, not only to my right hon. Friend who is chairman of the trustees, but to the other trustees who have undertaken their role with distinction. Despite stories in the press about hon. Members with their snouts in the trough, many widows and other dependants of those who have served as Members in the past are in dire circumstances and need the support of the fund. The trustees do a very good job.

Peter Lilley: I am grateful for the opportunity to respond to this brief debate and the two questions asked by the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes).
	On how the review might influence the disposal of moneys in the hands of the trustees, one proposal that we are considering is that a sum of money from that £4 million be handed back to the Treasury, which would take on the responsibility for the as-of-right cases during their remaining existence. Some actuarial assessment of costs would be sought, and the Treasury would in turn diminish or cease to make an annual contribution to the fund. The fund would therefore need to retain some moneys to ensure that it was properly financed, together with the ongoing subscriptions that it receives from serving Members to meet the needs of ad hoc cases that come before us. We will have to get the sums right in the review for that to be agreed, and for a proposal to be put before the House.
	On Capita, the issues raised by the hon. Gentleman were considered when there was the happy coincidence of the two bodies reaching a decision. That they both reached that decision should give him some comfort.
	I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify matters, and for the thanks that all who have spoken have given to the trustees. I add my thanks to all those who have served as trustees, and who do so out of a sense of noblesse oblige, as that service cannot in any way contribute to their parliamentary careers.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That, pursuant to section 4(4) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1948 and section 1(4) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1957, in the year commencing 1st October 2007 there be appropriated for the purposes of section 4 of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1948:
	(1) The whole of the sums deducted or set aside in that year under section 1(3) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1939 from the salaries of Members of the House of Commons; and
	(2) The whole of the Treasury contribution to the Fund in that year.

HOUSE OF COMMONS MEMBERS' FUND (CUSTODIAN TRUSTEE)

Resolved,
	That, in pursuance of sections 2(1) and (2) of the House of Commons Members' Fund Act 1939, Capita Trust Company Ltd. be appointed as custodian trustee in the room of the Public Trustee. —[Mr. Lilley.]

Public Accounts

Edward Leigh: I beg to move,
	That this House takes note of the 9th, the 11th, the 13th to the 40th and the 43rd to the 45th Reports, and of the First Special Report from the Committee of Public Accounts, Session 2006-07, and of the Treasury Minutes thereon (Cm 7076, 7077, 7151, 7152, 7216).
	Christmas may come only once a year, but other good things come more often, and this is the second debate this year covering the work of the Committee that I am privileged to chair. I am sure that Members will think that a just reflection of the prolific output of the Committee, and of the importance of its work.
	Our motto was spelt out some 150 years ago when the House was built and the Committee was brought into being. Above the door of Room 6A, which I have the privilege to use as Chairman of the Committee, is one word, "Assiduity". That is a watchword for all members of the Committee. We are, we hope, assiduous in holding the Executive to account, and in pursuing savings and improvements in public services. That role is perhaps not taken as seriously as it should be, but it is vital to the work of the House. It is therefore important to have two occasions every year when we can put the spotlight on efficiency savings.
	The Prime Minister says that his route map for the governance of Britain includes helping this place to hold those in power more accountable. I contend that that is what the Committee tries to do week in, week out. It can be testing, I know, for permanent secretaries to appear before the Committee, and we make no apology for that. In our last debate, I challenged those most senior of civil servants who appear before us to show without question that they understand the seriousness of their responsibilities to the Committee. I was thinking particularly of the way in which notes are often promised but their production is often subject to severe delay. Various commitments have been given, which I welcome. It is too early, however, to pass judgment on what will happen and whether the commitments will be carried out. I remind those on the Treasury Bench, however, of those commitments on behalf of permanent secretaries. I and my fellow members of the Committee remain on the watch. As we have seen in the past two or three years, it is absolutely vital that notes that are promised are delivered on time.

Philip Dunne: Does the Chairman of the Committee agree that it is not only important for notes to be made available when they are promised, but for the responsible officers of Departments to appear before the Committee whether or not they remain in post? I am thinking particularly of Mr. Johnson McNeil from the Rural Payments Agency, who failed to appear before our Committee for nearly a year after he was initially invited to do so.

Edward Leigh: That was a worrying development. Civil servants have a very difficult job, but usually, whatever happens, and whatever mistakes are made, they keep their job. If something goes wrong, however, they know that they must appear before the Public Accounts Committee. Mr. Johnson McNeil presided over one of the greatest failures of government and caused a lot of anguish to farmers. Our hearing, however, was delayed for the better part of a year while various sick notes were put in, phone calls were not returned and so on. Finally, he appeared, and in my view he was a perfectly adequate witness who gave his side of the story.
	Another message that we want to pass back to Whitehall is therefore that civil servants must realise, even if they are suspended from their post or have moved on to a different Department, that there is one place that they can be held to account on behalf of the public—in front of the Public Accounts Committee. Their superiors and the whole system must ensure that they turn up.
	An appearance in front of the Committee can be testing, but at the same time we try to be fair. We are not in any way party political, and we try to give praise where it is due, and to help the Government. This is not often heard from Opposition Members, but I and my fellow members of the Committee try our best not to be partisan. We try to help the Government, as best as we are able, to learn from best practice in whatever nook or cranny it can be found.
	By convention, the debate looks back at matters arising from the Committee's recent work. It also looks forward, however, as important lessons arise from our reports. We look to officials to apply those lessons and that experience to new challenges in whatever area of government they arise. The new challenges are many and varied.
	In the previous debate, in April, I think, I referred to the comprehensive spending review, which arrived earlier this month. What can we glean from it to guide the work of the Committee, given that this is the sort of tapestry on which we draw our work? Well, the squeeze is certainly on. If the aims are translated into action, the munificent Treasury will no longer be showering spending Departments with ever-increasing pots of gold. Everyone will have to raise their game to ensure that more limited increases in Government spending translate into better public services for all. Initiatives to cut waste, slash red tape and make better use of what we already have are essential if the whole edifice is not to crumble.
	The Government report that they are on track to realise their efficiency target of a massive £21.5 billion of savings by next March. That is really at the centre of the whole political debate—at the centre of the issue of whether political parties can deliver improving public services and lower taxation. The efficiency programme is the centrepiece of the Government's efforts to get more for less. The Treasury claimed that it had already achieved an annual £13.3 billion of efficiency savings, but I am afraid that, as we found in one of our recent reports, the claim does not stand up to close scrutiny. Our report cast doubt on the reliability of 74 per cent. of the savings claimed.
	It should be crystal clear whether or not any programme has achieved its goal. Efficiency gains must be real and demonstrable, and must be deliverable year after year. Remarkably, it was possible for claims to be calculated without account being taken of associated increases in costs elsewhere. Efficiency is not genuine if, as we have found in a number of cases, it has been achieved at the expense of the quality of service provided.
	Guarding against such—let us be generous—confusion is an important task for the Committee. I was therefore pleased to note the Government's announcement in the comprehensive spending review that there may be what we consider an important role for the National Audit Office in reviewing claimed savings on a Department-by-Department basis. That means an independent audit of what is now at the heart of political debate for all three political parties—indeed, for every political party: I see that parties other than the three major ones are represented here.
	If the scale of savings required is significant, the scale of projects that may cross the Committee's path in the near future is monumental. Let me list some of them. We are talking about £9 billion, already, for the Olympics; £19 billion to replace Trident; £12.5 billion for IT in the health service; at least £5.5 billion for identity cards; and £16 billion for Crossrail, which we debated earlier today and which is finally emerging from its elephantine gestation period. That is more than £60 billion in just one sentence, and I could go on and on.
	It looks like boom time for the contractors and consultants, but what lessons can be taken from the work of the Public Accounts Committee to ensure that it will not be the taxpayer who goes bust? We will have published nearly 70 reports by the time the Session ends, far more than any other Select Committee. I will spare the House the details of all of them. Sometimes in the past Chairmen have gone through the whole list, but I think that that is tedious, and there is no point in it. Instead, I shall focus on some of the essential verities that Government will need to grasp in response to the challenges that I have outlined.
	First, there is good project management. The Committee has seen a sorry succession of projects cursed by weak management and implementation. With some 100 mission-critical or high-risk IT-enabled programmes and projects, the risks are very high. Given the history of past failures, Government need structures and management processes that will secure greater success.
	When things go wrong, everyone pays the price. The implementation of the single farm payment scheme, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), was inept, and my Committee said so. The timetable was near-impossible. The planning was poor. The testing of IT systems was incomplete. Responsibility was confused. Management information was scant. Above all, top managers failed to face up to the crisis, and, as we heard earlier, to answer for it. Farmers, many of them in my Lincolnshire constituency, were hit emotionally and financially, and the taxpayer had to confront a potential liability approaching £500 million. Let that fiasco be studied for years to come, and let the message be drummed home to senior civil servants: never again.

Richard Bacon: I was interested by what my hon. Friend said about the Rural Payments Agency. He mentioned testing of the computer systems. A theme that has recurred a number of times, for example in regard to the issue that we examined relating to tax credits, is the failure to engage in adequate testing. The compression of the testing timetable featured in the Committee's report. What is it about computer systems that gives the Government such an aversion to testing them properly before they are implemented? Or is this a result of Ministers' shouting from the rooftops that projects must be completed by a particular date regardless of whether they are ready?

Edward Leigh: My hon. Friend's last point illustrates a difficulty that arises in Government. We live in a political system under which Ministers understandably want to get their own projects up and running while they are in office. Projects in the public sector are often far bigger and more complex than those in the private sector. The combination of political interference—if I may put it that way—and the sheer scale of projects frequently causes disasters. But let me take up my hon. Friend's point immediately, and say that we do not always want to be critical.

Austin Mitchell: Another problem may be the fact that civil servants are not prepared—I do not know why, because they should be—to stand up to Ministers. A Minister will get a bright idea and say, "Let us do it this way, let us do that, let us adopt such and such an initiative"—and senior civil servants do not dare to say, "We cannot do that with our current resources" or "We cannot do it while we are firing staff under the Gershon programme" or "We cannot do it because our computer systems will not cope with it". Civil servants ought to stand up to Ministers; that is what is primarily needed.

Edward Leigh: It would be great in an ideal world, but it might be rather career-limiting for a civil servant to stand up to his political master in the way that the hon. Gentleman describes. That was one of the problems with Johnson McNeil. We were surprised to hear that a man who had been charged with running such a huge project had apparently never seen the Secretary of State, or had seen her on only one or two occasions. That was rather worrying.

Philip Dunne: I can confirm that he met the Secretary of State twice. The second time was to get fired.

Edward Leigh: Well, there we are. Perhaps he made the mistake of standing up to a Minister on the first occasion; we do not know.
	The single farm payment scheme represented government at its worst, but a fortnight ago the Committee praised the introduction of the first generation of e-passports. That showed that the public sector can successfully deliver a major scheme to time, cost and quality. It was good to see the Identity and Passport Service taking on all the recommendations made by our predecessors. Planning from the outset was for a cautious, low-risk project of which my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) would approve, featuring substantial testing and sufficient time for a progressive roll-out rather than a big bang, a switch and the job was done. There are lessons in that which could well be learned throughout Whitehall.

Don Touhig: Does the hon. Gentleman share an impression that I have gained while serving on the Committee under his chairmanship? Does he agree that it always appears novel when we suggest to senior civil servants that they should carry out a "lessons learned" on any project, and that it is frustrating when no one takes responsibility for anything that goes wrong?

Edward Leigh: That is certainly frustrating. As Chairman, I am trying to establish a greater focus on the Treasury minutes. Members may be aware that our Committee is unique in that the Government must reply to every recommendation, and do so in a Treasury minute. While we are proud of the fact that 90 per cent. of our recommendations are apparently accepted by Government, when we examine the outcome we find that many of them are not adopted more widely across Whitehall, and as the right hon. Gentleman suggests, Members are often frustrated by a lack of accountability on the part of senor civil servants. That is why we are insistent that we will on occasion want not only to interview the current accounting officer, but also to summon back a previous accounting officer when it is clear that the current one is simply speaking from a brief because he or she has been in the post for only a few months and what went wrong was in fact the fault of the previous accounting officer. There is so much shuffling of chairs around Whitehall that it is often difficult for us to direct some light on who or what is responsible for faults.
	I respect the civil service and am generally loyal to it—as the son of a senior civil servant, I know that they have a difficult time. However, although we in this House tend always to lay the blame on their political masters, one of the virtues of the PAC is that it recognises the reality that senior civil servants play a powerful role in our system and that occasionally they must individually be held to account. They must be named and shamed, and sacked where necessary if they have been incompetent rather than merely the policy having been wrong. I am sorry to have to say this to the senior civil service—I know that many senior staff read the  Hansard reports—but we will in future be prepared to do that more often.
	Our 27th report, snappily entitled "Delivering successful IT-enabled business change", identified essential ingredients that help projects to avoid ending up on the rocks. Clear and resolute leadership is critical, as is strong budget management and having the internal experience and expertise to get the best from contractors. That sounds obvious, but it is a pity that such lessons are not learned more widely. Above all, there must be a crystal clear sense of where people are trying to get to, and a map of how to get there.
	Clear and resolute leadership requires senior decision makers to ensure clear lines of accountability and strong progress and risk management arrangements. Ministers must be challenged in order to ensure that plans are realistic—the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) made that point. The single farm payment scheme and the Child Support Agency are examples of complex and over-ambitious projects that suffered from a blurring of accountabilities.
	This sounds like a simple task, but management must also keep a tight grip on budgets. That point takes me on to the subject of the Olympic games. We all hope that, when the finishing line is crossed on 27 July 2012, they will be a great success—I am sure they will be. The risks, however, remain. The original bid seriously underestimated the cost of the games and was far too optimistic about the extent of private sector funding. We will shortly have a hearing on that, and we will constantly point a spotlight on the Olympic games so that we do not have merely an, as it were, post hoc PAC report on the Olympics after 2012; we want to keep close track of them as we approach 2012.
	The Olympics budget currently stands at £9 billion. No single individual has overall responsibility for delivering the games and the plethora of bodies involved presents significant risks to timely decision making, among other potential problems. Strong progress monitoring and risk management arrangements are essential, but they are not yet in place. Therefore, the Committee, with the support of the National Audit Office, will continue to keep a close eye on progress. We hope that when we reach 2012 the lessons will have been learned and we can have Olympic games that are both successful and—for the first time ever—delivered on budget.
	The public sector faces unique challenges. Its projects are every bit as complex as, and often larger than, those in the private sector. We should be optimistic, as some progress is being made. Our reports show that it is possible for the public sector to impose tight management disciplines on big projects. As Committee Chairman, I am keen to ensure that the PAC pays due recognition to public sector successes—that we do not always seek to carp, but that we congratulate, praise and welcome where appropriate.
	The Department for Transport admits that the programme to modernise the west coast main line was originally "naively based". That naivety had enormous financial consequences, but the Strategic Rail Authority and Network Rail stepped in; they strengthened project management, and passenger numbers are now up and journey times are down, and trains are more likely to run on time. There is much still to do, but we congratulate them on turning things around.
	Only if Departments can act as intelligent clients can they be sure of getting the best value for money from external suppliers. Departments need, of course, to understand the process being changed and have clear design requirements, but having the right staff and skills in place to engage effectively with suppliers can be the difference between success and failure. The Child Support Agency did not have the in—house technical expertise it needed to challenge its supplier. No one involved truly knew what they were doing in dealing with the contractors, and the IT system was a turkey from day one. It might prove to have been right to put the CSA out of its misery—most Members accept that—but the Government must also keep an iron grip on the new Child Maintenance and Enforcement Commission. It should not have taken 13 years of failure before the CSA was finally put out of its misery.
	Let me now turn to the topic of understanding and communicating the benefits of programmes. Active management and the right mix of staff will go a long way in helping Departments achieve the third in a trinity of success factors: having absolute clarity about the benefits they are trying to achieve. Not only do Departments need to have clarity themselves, but they need to sell the benefits to users, win wider support for change and, ultimately, assess whether the programme or project has achieved what it set out to do. Those are brave words, but when we examined the NHS IT programme we learned that there was still a great deal to do to win hearts and minds in the NHS. That is a major problem with this huge Government IT programme. Scepticism is rife throughout the NHS. With sums involved of more than £12 billion and counting, this is a high stakes game, and the Committee will return to the subject. By contrast, in terms of the west coast main line the SRA successfully engaged stakeholders in support of the programme and to clear effect. If we are to make a success of the NHS IT programme—as we are all committed to do—there must be more engagement with people on the ground, particularly GPs.
	Government need to adopt a more commercial approach to procurement. Central civil Government organisations spend approximately £20 billion a year on goods and services. About one third—almost £8 billion—of the Government's own efficiency savings are expected to come from more efficient procurement. Therefore, procurement is essential to their efficiency programme. There is certainly scope for such savings: in the past six months, in just four Committee reports we identified potential savings of some £1.3 billion a year. Consultancy firms have been on to a good thing, and we found that there was the potential to save £500 million in Departments' use of consultants by making more use of in-house staff, negotiating better contracting terms and getting improved results for the money they spend. We are pleased that the Cabinet Secretary is taking action, but will that produce results? Is all of this just words in Treasury minutes, or have we now moved on from what we see as an over-reliance on external consultancy firms? There is often enough in-house expertise.
	Another £500 million a year could be realised if OGC Buying Solutions was to improve performance and increase co-ordination. I was pleased to see that OGC agreed, and it was set a target to achieve £1 billion a year in savings by 2010.
	Best practice would often make a genuine difference if transferred elsewhere. There could, for instance, be the following savings: more than £220 million from the £2 billion a year spent on food in four key areas of public services; and more than £75 million a year if further education colleges adopt modern procurement practice. Opportunities exist, and even in such mundane matters as food procurement the possible savings are staggering.
	Wherever possible, procurement must be open and competitive. I will raise one minor example; a relatively small sum was wasted, but it offers a useful lesson. The backroom deal pursued by the Department of Health with Dr. Foster Intelligence was a failure in Government's duties to Parliament and the taxpayer. The sums involved were small, but fundamental principles were at stake. The choice of company and the haste with which the deal was concluded gave the Committee cause for concern. It is important that we occasionally draw back from all the huge projects and our need to talk in terms of hundreds of millions or billions of pounds and examine a small project, such as that involving Dr. Foster Intelligence, so that we can learn lessons.
	I have not yet mentioned the Ministry of Defence. Suffice it to say, given the mismanagement of technical and commercial risks on the Astute submarine programme, which was highlighted in the major projects report, that we will watch progress on the massive Trident replacement programme with two eyes fully open. If hon. Members will forgive the pun, little of this is rocket science; the simple adoption of methods tried and tested in much of the public and private sectors could save the taxpayer billions.
	I know that the Government, and Opposition parties, are wary of going back to the public and trying to make the case for efficiency savings. They think that the public do not believe that Government, or a future Government, can deliver efficiency savings, but they can be delivered and that is happening to a certain extent. An important role of the Committee is to put a spotlight on efficiency savings, to convince the Government to carry on with their work and to convince the Opposition that efficiency savings are deliverable now and in future.
	I come to my final theme, which, again, I have emphasised before. We can only truly judge whether all the expenditure announced in the comprehensive spending review is effectively used by assessing its impact on the end user—the consumer. It is all very well to talk in technical language, but we often forget that we work on behalf of the consumer, who is also usually the taxpayer.
	The Government's "Transformational Government" mantra calls for public services to be designed around the needs of the consumer, not the provider. Unfortunately, to take just one example, that was not the case in the introduction of the new out-of-hours care system. We found that the preparations for the switch in a system used by 9 million patients a year was shambolic. Patients' needs are not best served by the ending of Saturday morning surgeries, nor by a situation where access to advice and treatment is difficult and slow, or where no one knows whether the new service is meant for urgent cases only or for any requests for help. We accept that the new service is getting better, but it is costing about £70 million a year more than expected, which is the last thing that primary care trusts wanted or need in this difficult climate.
	On a more positive note, we returned in this period to the issue of tackling pensioner poverty by encouraging the take-up of entitlements. We were pleased to note that the Department for Work and Pensions is making good progress in encouraging patients to claim the pension credit to which they are entitled; however, billions of pounds lie unclaimed in the Treasury's coffers rather than in pensioners' pockets. Shared targets for the different agencies involved, allowing pensioners to claim linked benefits through a single transaction and focusing effort where we know that take-up is poorer might all help. The Committee is not afraid of new thinking—we seek it and welcome it when we see it—and we also welcome risk taking on the part of the Government.
	I have touched on just a few of the Committee's many reports, and they are sufficient to support our key contentions, although no doubt other hon. Members will highlight their own themes during this short debate. All members of the Committee would wish to say that we rely on our staff. I pay tribute to Mr. Mark Etherton and his colleagues for all their work, and to the National Audit Office, on which we also rely. Its dedication to enhancing scrutiny, improving delivery and support is vital.
	I thank those members who have left the Committee since the last debate: the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), whose appearance in the Committee was so brief that he never actually said a word, yet still we welcomed him; the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas); the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright); and the hon. Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Derek Wyatt). It seems that they have all moved on to Government, and they doubtless toil night and day to implement the Committee's recommendations. All its other members continue to work hard and assiduously to hold the Government to account, and I am grateful to them for making the Committee a pleasure to chair.
	In July, "The Governance of Britain" Green Paper set out proposals to improve the transparency and accountability of Government to Parliament. As the proposals are debated and fleshed out, I am sure that the example of the parliamentary audit of the public's finances has much to offer. In December, we are organising a conference—I am glad to say that the Chancellor and shadow Chancellor will be attending—to celebrate the decision taken in 1857 by the Select Committee on Public Moneys to create a Committee of Public Accounts. It was a brave decision to create such a Committee then, and it was braver still to entrust the honour of chairing it to an Opposition Member—an example that has been followed in many Commonwealth countries. Any Government might shy away from such a decision today, but they would be wrong to do so.
	I am proud to chair what people generally reckon to be the most powerful Select Committee of the House. We have an effective Committee precisely because we are cross-party and always achieve consensus. Since I became Chairman in 2001, we have made 2,500 recommendations, more than 90 per cent. of which have been accepted, and produced 300 unanimous reports—we have never had a vote. We must not be too sanguine about this, because we must constantly work harder and ask ourselves whether these recommendations are being not only accepted, but implemented across Whitehall.
	Our eyes will remain open and our heads will not turn the other way. On occasion, our tongues will doubtless remain sharp with senior civil servants, and they will not like it, but we shall study, with great care, progress on the massive projects that I mentioned in my opening remarks. I hope and believe that our reports will be high on the reading lists of the officials concerned. We will continue to criticise when criticism is warranted, and praise when praise is earned. That will be our ongoing contribution to ensuring that the Government are a better servant of the people. I commend the motion to the House.

Alan Williams: I shall be brief because I want to touch on only two specific issues, but it would be remiss if, before I attended to them, I did not congratulate my colleague, the Chairman of the Committee, with whom I have had a good working relationship as a senior member. We understand each other's thinking very well. I should also say how much I value his commitment to the Committee. The same must be said for my other Committee colleagues. Not many Committees have to cope with 60 pages of briefing twice a week and it takes a great deal of dedication to put in the time that they do, with as much enthusiasm as they have.
	I, like the Chairman, express my thanks to the National Audit Office for the quality of its reports, and for the service and benefits that it provides to the taxpayer. Each year, it saves eight times its annual budget, and that will increase to nine times next year. I cannot think of anyone else who can claim a record equal to that.
	I have touched on both of my two issues before, so these are follow-ups. I want to know what is happening in each area. In our previous debate, in April, I raised the issue of child obesity. We were told that schools are weighing children every year and checking for signs of obesity. The local health authority, the council and Departments could be told about problems, but we were astonished to find that parents could not. It was ludicrous that the relevant advisory committee described it as unethical to tell the parents, because back-up facilities in the community might not be available. That sounded more like a cover-up than a logical explanation. When I last raised the matter, I received a friendly and understanding response from the Minister. It was followed by a letter from the Department in which it indicated that it took the same view as the Committee—that parents had the right to know—and that it would take steps to introduce such a requirement. Months later, however, I still do not know where we are. On the 8 o'clock news the day before yesterday, it was suggested that Ministers might make some recommendations on the issue. When the Minister replies to the debate, will she be able to provide some up-to-date information?
	My other issue is strongly shared by all members of the PAC—indeed, by everyone who has ever been a member as far as I can remember: the BBC, which is the beneficiary of a tax on virtually every household in the country, is the one public organisation in receipt of taxpayers' money that is not accountable to the National Audit Office and, therefore, to the PAC.
	The Government, for some misconceived reason, say that the BBC cannot be audited because that would imperil its independence. That was repeated at our hearing in June. I put it to Mr. Peat from the BBC that
	"your grounds for objection in the past"—
	to such oversight—
	"have always been fear of interference in editorial independence."
	He agreed:
	"Yes, there must be no perception of any risk to that independence."
	I pointed out that the BBC World Service had been accountable to the NAO and the Committee for decades and that the last time representatives appeared before us I had asked the accounting officer whether, in her many years in the job, she could recollect any occasion on which the NAO or PAC had tried to interfere in editorial content. She said no, but that did not seem to matter to the BBC.

Don Touhig: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if a Government agency or an aspect of the operation of this House declined to be independently audited, the BBC would be the first to run a programme exposing it?

Alan Williams: Yes, and the Sharman committee was set up to examine Government agencies that were not answerable to the NAO. It made recommendations about Government agencies and companies that were not accountable. The Government accepted its recommendations and said that they would bring all those organisations under the NAO. They made two exceptions to the Sharman recommendations: the civil list—that was no surprise—and the BBC. The Government rejected a specific recommendation from Sharman that the BBC should be covered by the NAO, which was anomalous and illogical.

Philip Dunne: The right hon. Gentleman makes a telling point. Does he agree that it is disappointing, given the new structure established this year for the BBC Trust, that Sir Michael Lyons, who chairs it, should have rejected our overtures to re-examine the accountability of the BBC? In a letter to the Chairman and me, received last week, Sir Michael declined the opportunity of a review.

Alan Williams: That does not surprise me. Indeed, it makes me wonder what the BBC has to hide.

Richard Bacon: Does the right hon. Gentleman think that this subject might come up when next we see the director-general of the BBC—in, I think, December—and will he invite the Minister to explain what possible objection there can be, given that the NAO already has responsibility for auditing the BBC World Service, which is a by-word for editorial integrity?

Alan Williams: Indeed. There is no logic behind that position, but every incoming Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—and its many manifestations over the years—has been indoctrinated by officials that they must not touch the BBC. Most people who have seen the nonsense going on with BBC financing recently would think that it is an ideal candidate for investigation by the NAO and the PAC.
	Another point that I put to the BBC representative was that the NAO often solves problems, hence its record of saving the taxpayer eight times its annual budget. The BBC's representative was not moved. I pointed out that BBC representatives appear before Select Committees in the other place and here, and asked whether that compromised its independence. He accepted that that happened, but, he said:
	"I cannot think of an example where the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee have sought to go into contentious or difficult editorial issues. Their focus is on policy."
	That almost stands logic on its head. The claim is that auditing the BBC's finances is a danger to editorial freedom, but a Committee that has power to question policy is not. If the Government cannot see the difference, one wonders what else could demonstrate the absurdity of the situation. If it is all right for Select Committees to look at the BBC, the PAC should also have full access via the NAO. As I have said, one wonders what the BBC is afraid of; perhaps, given its financial behaviour recently, it is that the public will realise that it is not very good at management.
	I put it to Mr. Peat that the situation was illogical. He said:
	"My final comment will be that if Sir John"—
	the Comptroller and Auditor General—
	"wished to suggest at any time that there were areas where there would be benefits from NAO, which have not taken place in the past, I, as Chair of the Audit Committee, would be the first to recommend to the Board of Governors and the Board of Trustees that that should be very seriously considered."
	I asked:
	"Sir John, given the opportunity, as you are now, would you ask to have the right to audit the BBC?"
	Sir John replied:
	"Of course".
	So Mr. Peat had his answer back in June, and we have had our answer again—a flat, illogical refusal in the letter sent to the Committee in the past week. That is not acceptable. The Government should think rationally about the BBC. It is a great institution, but it should not be exempt from the same interrogation and analysis that every other tax-receiving body faces. I ask the Minister to raise that point with her colleagues.

Julia Goldsworthy: The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) asked what the BBC had to fear from giving evidence to the PAC, but the reaction of certain civil servants shows that it has quite a lot to be afraid of.
	My first observation follows from the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West and by the PAC Chairman, the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). It has been announced that the National Audit Office's remit will be extended to look in more detail at how savings can be made in each Department. Given that the BBC is going through a similar process, it would seem logical that it should be subject to similar scrutiny.
	I have never been a member of the PAC, but that is not necessary to appreciate its importance. I welcome the opportunity to discuss the Committee's prolific work since it was last debated in this House. The Government place ever greater focus on efficiency savings, so it is important that they continue to set ambitious targets, with delivery being scrutinised in great detail.
	When the House last discussed the PAC's work, the hon. Member for Gainsborough spent some time talking about the capability gap—whether public bodies can deliver public services. That question is now being considered by the Government, with Departments assessing their capability to deliver what is required of them. The PAC plays a very important role in that process, as is evident from the scope of the contributions made in the debate so far.
	One question in particular has emerged from the PAC's work over the past six months, and the hon. Member for Gainsborough touched on it his remarks: who is affected most keenly by the capability gap in the delivery of public services? Very often, the people who are most in need of help are most let down, and that is especially obvious in the tax credits system. It seems that the people who lose out by being caught up in overpayments are those at the margins, the ones on the lowest incomes who go in and out of work at different levels of pay. Ironically, they suffer most when their circumstances improve.
	We are considering various reports today, but I draw the House's attention to the one that shows the scale of the problems in the tax credits system. The PAC is not alone in investigating the matter: the recent ombudsman's report was also pretty damning, stating that HMRC
	"took a very rigid approach and assumed high levels of understanding of the system in terms of whether or not it is 'reasonable' for someone to know they were being overpaid."
	Comments such as that contrast significantly with the Treasury minutes in respect of the PAC's conclusions, especially where they deal with the cost of some of the proposed changes to the system and their impact on expenditure. In particular, the Treasury minutes on the impact of the proposed changes to the disregard rules state that
	"there are still some uncertainties surrounding the costing. In particular, it remains the case that while the overall cost of the package is not affected by the order with which the changes are modelled, these interactions mean that the costs of the individual elements of the package are affected by the assumed order with which the changes are modelled."
	The irony is that, although the Treasury is open about its uncertainty about the impact of the changes, it expects a sophisticated level of understanding among the people who are supposed to use the system.
	I am sure that all hon. Members have constituents who come to them for help with tax credits because they do not know where else to turn. Such people may have been thrown into debt after receiving a claim for overpayment that goes back over a number of years and runs into many thousands of pounds. One lady came to see me whose tax credit overpayment amounted to quite a few thousand pounds. She was doing everything that she could to meet the demand, and was even trying to save some money for her children. She told me that, for the first time, she was using for living expenses the money that every month she normally put towards child care and into a savings account.
	That is what tax credit overpayments can do to people even when they try to do everything right. It seems that the system has become more important than the individual. One constituent of mine completely changed his bank account, because that was the only way to get out of the tax credit system altogether. People are taking extreme measures, and it is very worrying that, in its response to reports such as the PAC's, the Treasury says only that it will "take note" of recommendations, rather than agree to them. I think that it should go back to first principles and agree to look at the system again, as the question goes beyond how the system is administered and what value for money is achieved. The important question posed in many reports produced by the PAC—and it is one that the Public Administration Committee looked into when I was a member—has to do with how systems are structured.

Richard Bacon: The hon. Lady mentioned tax credits, about which there have been various reports, but does she agree that one of the most extraordinary aspects is that HMRC now has a higher level of fraud and error than any other Department? The CAG has laid a qualified opinion against the accounts of the body that is supposed to collect taxpayers' money—a state of affairs that should not be allowed to continue.

Julia Goldsworthy: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about that, and the saddest thing is that the tax credits structure was set up with the best of intentions. On paper, it seems that the scheme should work perfectly and help everyone to the exact extent that they need support, but the reality is that it is far too complicated. People come to me all the time who say, "I'd rather not have any money whatsoever than be subjected to this system." That makes me wonder whether the Government should not look at tax credits again. Perhaps they should consider a fixed-payments system, as that might be fairer to the people whom they are trying to help.
	The wider theme has to do with the Prime Minister's approach to such matters. His intentions are no doubt genuine, but the structures are sometimes so complicated that they are out of control. Other reports that we are considering this evening make that clear. For instance, the report on pensioner poverty shows that millions of pensioners eligible for pension credit still do not claim it. Some pensioners find the system too complicated, while others do not want to undertake assessment on the telephone. Yet others find that the pension credit interacts with other benefits, such as those for council tax and housing, in too complex a manner. Once again, the question to be asked has to do with whether that system is more important than the person whom it is supposed to serve.
	Another problem is that the amount of bureaucracy involved will rise as more pensioners become eligible for pension credit. If 80 per cent. of pensioners become eligible for the entitlement, at what point will the Government decide that it should be universal rather than means tested? Most worryingly, the PAC report on pension credit found that certain vulnerable groups will be left behind. In theory, no pensioner living in poverty will miss out on pension credit, but the reality, especially in rural areas, is that such people are difficult to identify and to target.
	The experience with other schemes is useful in that regard. For example, Warm Front was a big, national programme that was easy to roll out to assist people living in conurbations, as the index of deprivation could be used to identify whole wards where poverty was concentrated. However, it proved very difficult to pick out people living in small pockets of poverty in neighbouring wards, even though they were in as much need as those targeted under the scheme. It is important that the same groups of people are not left behind by other Government schemes.
	Another theme raised in today's debate has been the poor quality of commissioning. That has further undermined the structures adopted for Government schemes such as the ones that I have described, and it has also had implications for service and for cost-effectiveness. The PAC report into the NHS IT project showed that there had been huge cost overruns, no clear idea about the overall expenditure on the project and significant delays to important aspects.
	The situation in respect of tax credits is similar. When I was a member of the Public Administration Committee, Sir David Varney talked about instituting a change in the operation of the tax credit system so that instead of payments stopping immediately when an overpayment was found there would be a three-week window to give the individual an opportunity to appeal. Sir David said that it would take a year to institute that one change in the computer programme; no doubt, since then there have been other unintended consequences that needed to be resolved.
	Those examples raise questions about Departments' experience in commissioning such services. What are the reporting standards when problems—relating to the CSA, for example—are investigated by the Department? One of my constituents had a problem with the CSA; payments had been made to the agency for the best part of two years yet she had received nothing. I wrote to the CSA on her behalf and was told that the agency accepted that there was a problem with her case, caused by some of the IT changes that had been taking place. The CSA could not tell me when, or if, it would be able to resolve the problem, but as it had written to me it assumed the matter was closed and contacted my constituent to tell her so. In how many other cases do the records show that a problem has been resolved when that is patently not so and people continue to receive a poor service? Can we be sure that the lessons are being learned? The Public Accounts Committee plays an important role in that regard.
	The PAC report on consulting made a series of recommendations, which were taken up by the Government, to ensure not only that Departments know how much they are spending on consultants and that they routinely assess the value of using them, but also that they share the information so that best practice can be adopted across Departments. It is great that the recommendations have been accepted, but what is being done to ensure that lessons are learned when responsibility is pushed down to local level?
	The Committee's report on out-of-hours services made it clear that primary care trusts were not experienced enough to know what they were trying to commission. In my constituency, a PCT took on a new deliverer of out-of-hours services, claiming that it offered better value for money. The result was appalling services that were internally audited so the people commissioning them had no idea about what was being delivered. Only when the matter was raised in the House did Serco pull its finger out and start to invest considerably more in the service than it had intended. If responsibilities are to be devolved to local government, or any other local body, lessons learned at national level need to be passed on, too.
	The same point applies to Sure Start, where the Committee's report showed that there were capacity problems and that staff lacked financial capability. We need to make sure that local authorities know what is being asked of them and that it is clear from the Government's point of view.
	The capability gap needs to be properly identified and the PAC plays an important role in doing so. It often has a vital role, too, in helping to fill the accountability gap: for example, in its work on the Rural Payments Agency, because people had no way of channelling their frustration, and on the NHS. Similarly, there is no clear chain of accountability in the CSA or tax credit systems and the Committee satisfies that lack. Without the doggedness of the Committee, the Government and their Departments would be much slower to learn their lessons.
	I thank the Committee for its excellent work and urge Members to continue it.

David Taylor: The hon. Lady talks about lessons learned. Does she agree that a common theme in many of the systemic failures, which, as she said, often affect the most vulnerable in our society, is that the delivery of schemes that were broadly approved in this place is made too complex? The CSA, the RPA and the miners' compensation scheme are just three examples of such over-complexity. How can the message be spread across Departments that they should keep things simple? If we keep it simple, the failures will not multiply and spread as they have done, especially in IT systems.

Julia Goldsworthy: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. My concern is not just how the lessons are learned in new bodies in the future, but how we deal with the results of existing schemes. It should not have taken 13 years for us to realise that the CSA was in such a state that it needed to be replaced entirely. What happens about the legacy issues? Unfortunately, we cannot start with year zero; we have to work with the legacy, which is where the eminently sensible recommendations of the PAC play a really important role. As a cross-departmental Committee, the PAC can help to unravel some of the complexity so that the impact of its recommendations is felt more widely.
	The Committee must keep up its excellent work; otherwise, the vulnerable individuals who seem to suffer most at the hands of a system that is not working will keep coming to our surgeries because they have nowhere else to turn.

Austin Mitchell: In saying that I will be brief, I shall be unusual, and actually be brief. I did not intend to speak in the debate, except of course to ingratiate myself with the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, whose work I so much respect. However, I have some observations.
	The PAC is the most exciting Committee on which I have ever served. I am rapidly developing my Perry Mason skills, although I am not yet quite brutal enough. At first I was nervous and diffident in the blood sport that is the lust to kill civil servants. I used to quake, but I am learning to be as nasty as the rest, and I hope it will stand me in good stead in parliamentary debates.
	The experience has been exciting. The Public Administration Committee comes second after the Public Accounts Committee, and it is certainly sexier, but the Public Accounts Committee is the best one to be on. There are a few problems, however.
	We never get to grips with the people who make the mistakes and fail in their performance; the perpetrators disappear. In business, when someone makes a disastrous mistake they are richly rewarded with a golden handshake and sent into retirement, to start their own company—or some other symptom of failure—but we do not even have a system for sending failures in the public service to run power stations in Cleethorpes, which would be a profitable and interesting occupation. There seem to be no sanctions, and we are not getting to grips with the people who make mistakes. As the Chairman said, it would be useful if we could examine the accounting officer under whose aegis the mistake was made. We cannot do so, which is infuriating.
	Equally infuriating, many of the mistakes are made by politicians and parties—by us. In this era of 24-hour news coverage, there is a tendency to govern by initiative. We constantly announce new initiatives, approve them in this place, because they are obviously common sense, and rush them in. The Child Support Agency had near unanimous support in the House, as did some of the other developments that have gone so disastrously wrong. Initiatives are rushed in with a chorus of approval and pushed on to Departments by Governments—Governments of both parties, although we are a fairly initiative-prone party. New Labour is more initiative-prone than old Labour and, if the Conservatives ever get back to power, they will probably go in the same direction.
	As I tried to intimate in my intervention on my Chairman's speech, the problem is that civil servants do not stand up to Ministers and say, "This can't be done with these resources. We need more staff. We can't do this when the Gershon process is firing and getting rid of the people whose skills we need, whose contacts we have and whose experience we want to mobilise on this project. We can't do it without our existing computer systems." I know that there is a problem in the sense that the wool is too easily pulled over the eyes of the civil servants by the salesmen from the super computer companies.

David Taylor: rose—

Austin Mitchell: I am not looking at my hon. Friend with malevolent intent. The big computer and IT companies seem able to sell quite extravagant and unnecessary systems.

David Taylor: My hon. Friend is right to draw out the theme that very senior civil servants do not resist the undeliverable wishes of politicians. That might, apply—poetically—to the National Audit Office itself, which is sucked into the snake-oil attractions of things such as the private finance initiative, and draws its teeth before writing critical reports of projects associated with that initiative. The NAO is not free from blame in that respect, is it?

Austin Mitchell: I cannot accept that accusation from my hon. Friend, although I accept most of his accusations against other organisations. We agree fairly substantially about them. In a sense, the NAO was too soft in the early stages about the private finance initiative, but it then gradually began to get tougher as it got to grips with the issue. In demanding that the savings from the selling on of PFI debt be paid back to the public sector, it has shown that it has more teeth and is able to deal with the issue. Perhaps it was a little too welcoming at first, but it now has the situation under control. This is a learning experience for all—for the NAO as well as for us.
	I therefore acquit the NAO of my hon. Friend's accusation. Its reports are very cautious and one has to understand their language and read through them. Sir John Bourn tends to hint at things rather than come out extravagantly and say, "These people are making a terrible mistake. It's an absolute disaster!" Instead, we have a mild response in the report, but that is inevitable. We are working in that kind of atmosphere, and it is up to us as politicians to put the political punch into it and start laying the blame and throwing the accusations around. It is not up to the NAO. Let us not be critical of it.
	I am critical, however, of the unwillingness of civil servants to stand up and say, "This won't work," or, "It can only be made to work with a lot more extra spending." The rural payments were a classic instance of that. Ministers, with support from the farmers, went for the most complicated system. It was a system that nobody else used, and I do not know why we went for it. By that time I had come off the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, but my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) might be able to tell us the answer. Politicians went for the most complex system, and it was pushed through at a time when the Rural Payments Agency was getting rid of staff who had close contact with the farming industry and knew the people in their area. Those staff were being fired, but subsequently had to be brought back, because the agency could not do the job.
	Fortunately, the agency's head eventually appeared before the Committee and gave quite a good account of himself, although I still think he was wrong. He sent monthly reports to Ministers saying, "We're on course and things are on line to start the payments." Then he began to put more weasel words in and said that the agency was not quite ready. Then, finally, the total disaster emerged. However, he did not, at the start, say to Ministers, "We can't do it with these staffing levels; we can't do it and get rid of these people; we can't do it on the basis of the regional structure that we have." He did not say that, but he should have done. The Chairman of the Committee said that making such comments would have been career-limiting—and so it would. But presiding over disaster is even more career-limiting, and it is necessary to point that out.
	I have criticised civil servants by saying that they do not have the commercial skills to negotiate better deals on PFIs, and that is certainly true at local government and hospital level. There is a Treasury team to advise them and put backbone into them, but it cannot do everything and go all over the country.

Richard Bacon: rose—

Austin Mitchell: I criticise civil servants in that regard, but perhaps the hon. Gentleman is going to criticise me.

Richard Bacon: I am interested in what evidence the hon. Gentleman has for his assertion that presiding over a disaster is career-limiting. After all, the permanent secretary at the Home Office, Sir John Gieve, presided over such a mess that its accounts were presented to Parliament unaudited. His punishment for that was to be promoted to be deputy governor of the Bank of England in charge of financial stability in the banking system, which of course was to the fore when we had the Northern Rock fiasco. That is the sort of thing that we might expect to find in Gilbert and Sullivan, but not necessarily in real life.

Austin Mitchell: The Northern Rock of ages was well cleft for him. I was really rebutting the point made by the Chairman of the PAC that it would be career-limiting to stand up to Ministers. It is essential that that be done; otherwise everybody is left with egg on their face. Let us not say that it is career-limiting to preside over disaster; let us say it is career-changing and possibly a path to promotion.

David Taylor: rose—

Austin Mitchell: I should not have said anything, should I?

David Taylor: My hon. Friend is most generous in giving way again. As one of the two rapporteurs on the RPA disaster for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, may I cite another example to the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon)? At the time of the disaster, the permanent secretary to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Sir Brian Bender, was seamlessly moving onwards and upwards, almost without trace. That is a another classic example.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sorry to interrupt the harmonious dialogue between two hon. Members, but I am struggling to understand which report is being discussed. We do not actually have a report on that subject. It is fair enough to develop a general point about the competence or otherwise of civil servants, but we are not debating the report on the Rural Payments Agency.

Austin Mitchell: I am most grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was talking about the report on the Rural Payments Agency, but I shall now proceed to talk about the reports on PFI contracts and Government consultancy contracts that are within our purview today.
	The report on consultants, in particular, shows a much more critical attitude to civil servants on the part of Government than I would want. We have a fine civil service in this country, but it has been downgraded—first by the Conservative Government, whose leaders had a path in their heads and imposed things on the civil service, and then by us, who did not quite trust civil servants. The result has been that instead of taking policy advice from civil servants, the Government prefer to have the imprimatur of outside consultants, at enormous expense. What the second report—there was an earlier one in 2002—shows is the enormous fees paid to consultancies, and as we all know, consultancies are a system for telling us what we wanted to hear in the first place.

David Taylor: And for recommending their friends.

Austin Mitchell: And for recommending their friends to carry through the execution of the project. That is the procedure. Our report showed that the Government were making excessive use of consultants and pointed to the need to build up expertise in the Departments rather than handing work out to consultants. It is a question of respect for the civil service.
	I said that I would be brief, but all the interruptions have made me take a detour for what seems like the past three quarters of an hour. I shall conclude with a couple of observations about the way in which we deal with the reports. Perhaps it is the geriatric in me, but I find our procedures a bit confusing. A National Audit Office report comes out, and we have a session on it. We then write a report, and when it is finally published, we get telephone calls from people asking us about something that we have totally forgotten about. The procedure is not seamless; it is not well knit together. There is not a stage at which we can really produce a conclusive report on an issue.
	The second problem is that, as I said at the beginning, in all our proceedings we are not actually dealing with the people who made the mistake—the people who took the decision. If we are to produce an effective report, we need to know what happened to them. We need to know whether any sanctions were imposed on them, or whether they took a seamless path to promotion, as my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire put it. As Virgil said,
	"facilis descensus Averno...sed revocare gradum...hoc opus, hic labor est."
	That is, it would be difficult to pull those people down again. We, as a Committee, need to know what happened to them, and whether any sanctions were imposed on them. However, the Committee should be able to acknowledge that many of the mistakes are ours; they are made by politicians, and result from our not thinking a project through before we ask the civil service to implement it.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will ensure that the  Official Report gets a translation.

Richard Bacon: It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. I have been a member of the Committee for six years, and have seen a number of common themes emerge. I want to address just a few of those themes, with particular reference to the reports mentioned in the motion.
	The first issue that I shall deal with—I hope that the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury will address this point in her reply—was touched on by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) in his intervention on the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy). The question is: what is the centre doing to make sure that when projects are spread out across Whitehall Departments and agencies, things actually happen? Obviously, there is inherent tension between avoiding a situation in which the Treasury is too involved, and tries to micro-manage matters that should be the responsibility of Departments, and avoiding sitting back and watching a Department make a mess of things with the taxpayers' money given to it by the Treasury.
	I have not had the pleasure of being a Treasury Minister and being vexed by such issues—although I am sure that that is something that history will correct in the fullness of time. I am sure that Treasury Ministers worry very much about that tension between the centre and departmental responsibility. The tendency has been to let Departments sort things out. Some years ago, there was the fiasco of the individual learning accounts—an adult training scheme with great intentions, which was designed to help the most vulnerable, and which failed miserably. I remember thinking, "Where was the Treasury?" Similarly, in the case of the Rural Payments Agency—although I respect the fact that we are not talking about that issue today, Mr. Deputy Speaker—it was for the Department to sort out the issue. The Treasury left the Department to it, and left it to bear the financial brunt, too.
	The Paddington health campus scheme was the subject of our ninth report, and at the time I found myself thinking about not where the Treasury involvement was, but where the Department of Health involvement was, in relation to the local strategic health authority and the local hospital trusts involved. The ostensible purpose of the scheme was to merge the St. Mary's NHS Trust and the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Trust. However, as conclusion (i) of our report said,
	"The Paddington Health Campus scheme, as proposed...was based on an inadequate Outline Business Case, constructed without the benefit of input from doctors and nurses as to the required clinical content."
	We went on to say, in conclusion (iii), that
	"It took several years after the initial outline business case for the Campus partners to reach a clear position on the clinical content of the Campus, the land required, the planning constraints and the likely cost and affordability of the scheme. The scheme's development was also handicapped by insufficient manpower and capability. NHS Trusts taking forward building schemes should have early external assessments...of their capacity to deliver complex schemes and firm timetables against which they can measure progress."
	The Treasury minutes responded:
	"Trusts are advised to appoint a dedicated full-time project director and DH has established specialist Project Director's courses at selected universities. Proven, high quality Project Directors are also deliberately moved to new schemes so hard won experience and expertise is not wasted."
	That is all very good, and I think that we all say amen to that. However, the question is this: the Government may think that it is good to have full-time project directors, and that they are necessary for delivering projects successfully, but are they actually acting on that in practice?
	That brings me to my second question, which is not so much about the centre versus the local, but about whether we are getting the basics right, at whatever level. Our 14th report was on delivering digital communications through the Bowman programme. That was a so-called combat infrastructure platform—a battlefield communications system. The project was inherently complicated, because it sought to make sure that all the different players in a battle, whether they were battle tanks, infantry or air support, could talk to each other, and to HQ, and all that had to be delivered properly. It was an extraordinarily complex project, yet it did not have a senior responsible owner. It was not that the senior responsible owners kept changing, as we have seen happen in many projects; there just was not one at all. As our report concluded,
	"There is no individual within the Department with full responsibility for ensuring that the Bowman CIP"—
	combat infrastructure platform—
	"project meets its objectives. In 2006, the Department belatedly appointed a senior officer to act as Senior Responsible Owner. But he lacks the authority and time to effectively discharge this onerous responsibility and is only supported by a small staff."
	The Ministry of Defence, and subsequently the Treasury in its minutes, concluded that that was an omission, and that:
	"It is the Department's policy that large and complex projects or groups of projects have a Senior Responsible Owner appointed on behalf of and accountable to the Defence Management Board."
	It is a good idea to have project directors and senior responsible owners in charge of projects, but even if a senior responsible owner is in charge, is that enough? It would appear not, because our first conclusion in our 27th report on IT-enabled business change, which was referred to earlier, was:
	"A fifth (21 per cent.) of Senior Responsible Owners of mission critical and high risk IT-enabled programmes had not met with the nominated Minister and a further 28 per cent. met the Minister less than once a quarter. For these major high risk undertakings to succeed, Ministers need to be briefed fully and candidly at least quarterly on risks, progress and cost escalations".
	In its reply, the Treasury states:
	"Ministers and Accounting Officers should, in particular, be briefed when there is significant deviation from the programme or project plan—that is, where there is more than three months slippage".
	I am bound to ask, why should Ministers not be briefed all the time? Why should they be briefed only when there is slippage? Should not Ministers know what is going on in mission-critical projects all the time, whether they are going well or not? Why do Ministers not say, at an early stage, "Why don't you have a senior responsible owner?"?
	I remember talking to a Minister who was involved in one high-profile case that the Committee considered—a typical IT project that had gone wrong. I am sad to say that that Minister resigned, because he had the wisdom to vote the right way on the Iraq war—that is to say, against—and he could not do that and support the Government policy of the day. I am glad to say that his career has been restored now; he is actually in the Cabinet, so that may give hon. Members a clue as to who I am talking about. I remember him saying, in respect of a particular project, "I sat in a room, having listened to what people said, and having read about the matter, and I said, 'This isn't going to work, is it?'" He said that there were 12 people in the room—civil servants and consultants—and they all said, "Oh yes, Minister, it will work." He said that there was no one in the room who said, "Well, actually, no. You've got a point; there are some serious concerns." There was no critical friend at court to make sure that the concerns were given a serious airing and had a serious voice, and as a result, he signed off the project. Of course, his instincts and concerns were absolutely right, and the project hit the buffers, just as so many others do.
	In another case, I was talking to the senior computer contractor from a major firm which has been involved in many of the projects that we have examined, who was desperate to talk to the Minister to find out how to resolve an impasse and get some clarity on direction, and finally begged the Department for a meeting with the Minister. Within 10 minutes of that request, the permanent secretary himself was on the phone saying, "You don't talk to Ministers. We talk to Ministers."
	If I were a Minister—as I mentioned to the Exchequer Secretary earlier, she does not seem to think that that is likely, but in the fullness of time I very much hope that we will have the chance to put into practice some of the things that we are talking about. It seems to me essential for Ministers to find critical friends at court, who would tell them not what they wanted to hear, but what they did not want to hear. I am sure that the more intelligent and switched-on Ministers do that. There is also the problem, as we heard earlier, of civil servants not being able to get the access that they require to Ministers, as we heard again in the context of the Rural Payments Agency.
	In relation to the 27th report, there was one answer from the Treasury that I thought was particularly interesting. We said in our conclusion (iii) that
	"over half of Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) are in their first SRO role, and nearly half spend less than 20 per cent. of their time on such duties."
	Lack of time was a key factor in some of the other projects that we looked at. We went on to say:
	"Lack of relevant experience, combined with a regular turnover of post-holders, adds unnecessary risk to the management of IT-enabled change."
	We said:
	"To address these issues, departments should appoint a Senior Responsible Owner at the outset of an IT-enabled business change on the presumption that he or she will remain in post until the programme or project is delivered, with performance and reward linked to agreed targets and milestones."

David Taylor: I shall not refer to the RPA, as that report is not under discussion, but I worked on major IT projects for almost 30 years before coming to this place. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one of the common themes with major IT project failures is that the client Department needs to be an intelligent client, and it cannot be an intelligent client if it outsources virtually every aspect of the development of computer systems? It needs to have its own internal trusted, experienced people, who can balance out the glowing reports given by the would-be supplier of the software.

Richard Bacon: I completely agree. I remember the then chairman of the Inland Revenue, as it was then, Sir Nick Montagu, fiercely denying what was plain to everybody else—that the Inland Revenue had ceased to be an intelligent client, because so much of its sourcing function and its buying function was spread out among different consultancies that it was only one or two of the consulting firms that had an overview of what was going on. The Inland Revenue was no longer capable of answering the intelligent questions that one wanted to ask, because too much of its expertise was outsourced.
	I was talking about the appointment of a senior responsible owner, and the presumption that the SRO would remain in post until the project was seen through. The interesting thing was the Government's answer in the Treasury minute, in which the Treasury says:
	"The Government agrees that continuity of leadership is of critical importance".
	That is in paragraph 11, on page 3 of the minute on the 27th report. However, the next sentence states:
	"Although the natural progression of civil servants between roles may mean that a project has more than one SRO during its lifetime, the expectation should be that the SRO should change only when absolutely necessary, at appropriate stages to allow an orderly handover, and that the SRO will not move on until a replacement has been put in place."
	That is common sense, but why does the natural progression of civil servants between roles mean that a project should have more than one SRO? Why should not the SRO finish the project, deliver it and then get the natural progression to the next post in their career? Unless and until they have completed the project, they should not have a natural progression. If that means paying civil servants more in post, so be it.
	I know that I am not talking rubbish about this, because I have heard Sir Peter Gershon, and before him various other civil servants, talking about the need to reward civil servants who stay in post to see projects through. Yet here we have the Treasury saying
	"the natural progression of civil servants between roles may mean that a project has more than one SRO".
	I say that the SRO should see the thing through. The project should be short enough for one SRO to deliver it. It should be done in bite-size chunks that can be delivered. That is one of the central problems that we face in getting an improvement across Government.

Julia Goldsworthy: Does the hon. Gentleman think that one of the reasons why civil servants may move on is that projects tend to overrun for so long that if they stayed for the duration, civil servants might be claiming their pension by the time the project was finished?

Richard Bacon: The hon. Lady probably has a point. No matter where a project stands and how well developed it may or may not be, the culture of the civil service says, "Come on, Carruthers, your two and a half years are up. It's time for you to get some more experience. You're going to be transferred to the Cabinet Office"— or to stamping passports in Tristan da Cunha, depending on how well or badly he has done. That is valued more highly than the delivery of a project. I do not think that the delivery of a project has enough value inside Whitehall.
	There is an explanation for that, which is unfortunate. Delivery of a project is not what causes civil servants to do well, because in a Darwinian sense it is not highly enough valued. What is highly valued is the ability to get Ministers out of a hole—I do not blame the present Government; I think this is universal with Governments of all parties—and to help Ministers explain why things that look like a disaster are "the best that we can possibly have done, considering the difficult combination of circumstances with which we were faced, Minister." A civil servant who can do that will prosper. That is the fault of politicians, not civil servants.

Edward Leigh: And until recently, not a single project director had ever become a permanent secretary.

Richard Bacon: That is a scandal. We must start changing the culture and valuing the delivery of projects, and that requires changes on the part of politicians, so that Ministers are not trying simply to grab a quick headline, but to deliver commitments and see them through. That is probably as difficult for the present Labour Government as it will be for a future Conservative Government. It is a fundamental and inherent problem in delivering good government.
	I shall refer to one more thing in the Treasury minutes on the report. We had said in recommendation (ix):
	"The Office of Government Commerce and the Delivery and Transformation Group have not had the power to halt failing programmes and projects. The Treasury's new Major Projects Review Group will however be reviewing all new business cases for high risk or mission critical programmes".
	For some years I have wanted to see some central capacity—some power at the centre— to say, "You've failed. No more money. We're pulling the plug." It seems obvious that that power should sit in the Treasury, but the Treasury minute answering that point, paragraph 21, says not that the Treasury will have that power, but rather:
	"The Government agrees that the MPRG should make it clear to Departmental project owners what they need to do to address its concerns."
	There is enormous fear of greater interference. I appreciate that there are people saying that there is too much interference from the centre with Departments, just as there is from Departments down across the country—but one of my first points, which I hope the Exchequer Secretary will address, is whether the balance is right. We do not want huge amounts of intervention. We want the right intervention and the right power at the right time at the centre. I am not convinced that we have got that balance right.
	My next point, which is related, is that the same problems occur again and again. In our 31st report on the Government's use of consultants is a good example. We said in recommendation (ii):
	"Departments and OGC do not routinely know how much money is spent on consultants",
	in recommendation (iii):
	"Consultants are often used when in-house staff have the necessary skills and are less expensive",
	in recommendation (iv):
	"Departments do not routinely assess the value of the work they receive from consultants",
	in recommendation (v):
	"The capability of departments to be intelligent customers"—
	the point made by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire—
	"is weakened by insufficient sharing of information on consultants' performance",
	and in recommendation (vi) that
	"40 per cent of clients consider they have used consultants when it was not necessary."
	We said in recommendation (viii):
	"Departments do not regularly plan for, or achieve, the transfer of skills from consultants to their staff to build internal capabilities"
	and in recommendation (ix):
	"Some consultant charges lack transparency",
	and so on.
	The interesting thing is that not only were all those recommendations and the themes relating to them clearly identified in our Committee's 2002 report on better value for money from professional services—we make this point in our recommendation (i), which the Treasury refers to in its minute in reply on page 31—but the Cabinet Office identified those problems in a study which its own scrutiny unit did eight years previously, in 1994. It stated clearly that the Government were poor at identifying when consultants should be used, poor at appointing them, poor at project management during the process, poor at transferring skills to in-house staff and poor at learning lessons for the future.
	None of this is new at all, which is why I asked the Exchequer Secretary about the tension between the centre and the local and the centre and the Department, and about whether, without being heavy-handed or bureaucratic, things can be done to improve that balance. I hope that she will find time to address that issue specifically.
	I have been reading Michael Barber's book "Instruction to Deliver", in which he discusses the need to improve Departments' performance, in an environment in which the Treasury would not co-operate. He refers to Sir David Normington, who is now at the Home Office, telling him about the problems that he would face. The Treasury would shut him out, permanent secretaries would neither talk to him nor give him information and he would not be able to get to the Prime Minister—then Mr. Blair—because the policy unit would be in the way. That meant that he would probably be finished before he even started, so he had to think about how to get round the situation. He proposed a series of simple measures and behaviours to be adhered to—including, by the way, abolishing the delivery unit after a few years. He thought that that would help to improve its performance, and I think that in some ways it did. The whole story illustrates a vexing and long-term problem in the nature of how we govern ourselves, and I would be interested in the Exchequer Secretary's thoughts on that.
	Finally, I want to say a quick word about the BBC. I see no good reason why it should not be subject to the same degree, quality and type of scrutiny as other bodies that undertake public expenditure. The criticism that it, an important national institution, has come in for recently may be down to the fact that it has not had enough of the right scrutiny early enough. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne is no longer in her place, because a good example of BBC extravagance took place in her constituency, when Dame Ellen MacArthur arrived back from sailing around the world. We are all familiar with BBC producers turning up to cover the same event; I have asked people, as a party game, how many BBC producers they think turned up to cover the return of Dame Ellen. They usually say five, 10, 15, 20 or even 30—but in fact 64 BBC producers were there. With the best will in the world—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is going a little far from the brief that is before the House; I suggest that he steer his way back.

Richard Bacon: I shall steer away from those rip tides, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I hope that the Exchequer Secretary will think about that issue, because I know that other Members, including the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), are concerned about it.
	I shall make one other point before concluding. The Public Accounts Committee's 20th report on the national programme for IT stated on page viii:
	"We are concerned in particular that iSOFT's flagship software product, 'Lorenzo'—on which three fifths of the Programme depends—is not yet available despite statements by the company in its 2005 Annual report that the product was available from early 2004."
	The software company said that the product would be available, but still it was not. Paragraph 33 of the Treasury response stated:
	"The Lorenzo product is expected to be available during 2008."
	I will not dwell on the issue, because I am a bit bored with making well-researched and informed speeches on the national programme for IT in the health service, only for Ministers to say things that are manifest nonsense. I shall not encourage the Exchequer Secretary to say something that is probably not true; all I ask is that she, or one of her colleagues, will come to the House to inform us when the Lorenzo product becomes available. I do not think that paragraph 33 is true; time will tell us that.
	I said that I would refer only to paragraph 33, but I should also refer to recommendation 4, one of the most important of our report. It stated:
	"In view of the slippage in the deployment of local systems, the Department should also commission an urgent independent review of the performance of Local Service Providers against their contractual obligations."
	The purpose of that recommendation was to help the Treasury and central Government in their battle against computer contractors. Such an independent review would show that the local service providers had failed in respect of a whole panoply of contractual obligations into which they had entered, and make it much easier to unravel the contracts without huge cost to the taxpayer.

Philip Dunne: It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), who confirmed his six years' experience on the Public Accounts Committee. That considerably outweighs mine; I have just had my first anniversary.
	I have also enjoyed serving on the Committee. I have come to appreciate the value of its work in identifying management failings in the public sector—whether they involve value-for-money or efficiency issues. We have heard many such failings rehearsed by hon. Members this evening.
	I should like to highlight one particular aspect of the Committee's effectiveness which I have noted from a number of our evidence-taking sittings. It appears that the threat of a National Audit Office investigation followed by a PAC report can have an electrifying effect on the relevant Department or agency. When the permanent secretary or chief executive of the agency come before us, they quite regularly seek to respond to our questions by pointing out what improvements they have made since the National Audit Office report was written.
	As the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) said, there is a considerable delay between the publication of the NAO report, our meeting to discuss it, the publication of our report and the publication of the Treasury minute. During that whole period, the Department or agency concerned is under a degree of scrutiny. In many cases, their ability to point to improvements resulting from what has been flagged up in the initial investigation is remarkable. That is clear evidence of the effectiveness of our Committee, and I doubt whether other Select Committees have such an effect; I am sure that they do on some issues, but not as frequently as ours does.
	The Committee also occasionally has an electrifying effect on Ministers, who, although they do not appear before us, can make policy adjustments as a result of our conclusions. Sometimes, such measures include the ultimate rectification, which may lead to the scrapping of the initiative or the agency—we have even seen the scrapping of a Department in the past year or so.
	I should like to give two specific examples of the effectiveness of our work. The first comes from the 11th report on supporting small business, published on 6 February this year. The Small Business Service was formed in 2000 as an executive agency within the Department of Trade and Industry. On 19 June 2006, a month before I joined the Committee, the PAC took evidence following a highly critical NAO report, which had identified 265 separate funding streams within the Small Business Service. They were included in a total of some 2,500 business support schemes promoted by various branches of the Government. The then Chancellor had spotted that that was a potentially inefficient way to help business, and in the 2006 Budget he announced an initiative to reduce the schemes to a mere 100.
	In autumn 2006, the decision was taken to reform the Small Business Service, which has now been reconfigured as a policy unit within what was then the DTI, with 50 core staff—some 10 times fewer than in 2004, when it employed more than 500 people. Since the publication of our report, the Small Business Service has been rectified out of existence and ceased to have executive agency status. On Monday, I looked at the website of the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to see how many schemes were still in operation. The Minister may well be on top of this, but she might be surprised to know that of the 2,500 original schemes, 2,497 were in operation, despite the Chancellor's proposal to reduce the figure to 100. She may like to comment on that in her closing remarks.
	This morning, I had a meeting with representatives of the Engineering Employers Federation for the west Midlands. During a wide-ranging discussion of support measures for business, one of the messages that came out loud and clear was that there is still considerable confusion about the provision of advice from Government to business. There is a plethora of advisers and schemes but a shortage of cash to help business with the promotion of their endeavours, whether domestically or internationally through exports. I encourage the Minister to consider the proposals in the pre-Budget report to change business taxation, because another message that came across loud and clear is that the changes to capital gains tax, supplementary business rates and increased corporation tax rates for small business are extremely unwelcome in that sector. Taking some advice from the business community on those measures, alongside work through the plethora of schemes that I mentioned, could well have much more impact on promoting small business. I hope that the Minister will consider that.
	The second report of our Committee that clearly had an impact was our 37th report on the Child Support Agency and the implementation of the child support reforms. The failures of the CSA have been well rehearsed in this Chamber over many years. The Government have now decided to replace it, and introduced legislation to do so in June this year. They had looked at the Committee's conclusions, and I think that we can take some credit for helping to identify failings in three specific areas. The first of those concerned the identification of uncollectible debts. As we know, the CSA has some £3.5 billion of debts from non-resident parents. The Committee identified, through the persistence of our questioning, that of that amount £1.9 billion is deemed to be uncollectible, partly because the debts were attributed to non-resident parents as a device by the officers involved to try to frighten them into making a contribution by putting a debt on the system which could subsequently not be taken off because of IT incompetence. The system's inability to correct that anomaly was one of the fundamental reasons why it was decided to scrap it.
	The second area concerned the backlog of cases stuck between the different phases of the system, where progress was being made but it was painfully slow. More than 100,000 cases remain stuck, and nothing can be done. The third area concerned our pointing out the effectiveness of similar schemes in other countries, particularly Australia. In our conclusions, we identified the effectiveness of the Australian system in providing access to personal tax information on non-resident parents as being an effective way of establishing their genuine income rather than their claimed income. I believe that the Government have taken that on board in the legislation they have introduced and there will be access to information held by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs. I welcome that.
	I should like briefly to touch on a few other reports to highlight some of the areas where we have been helpful or could be helpful to the Government in looking at ways to improve delivery of public services. In March this year, our 13th report on smarter food procurement covered a whole range of aspects of Government procurement designed to provide not only efficiency in the use of public money but other policy initiatives. We have heard about the importance of healthy eating as a means of trying to address public health among children in schools, including in relation to obesity. The public sector could play a much greater role in encouraging the health of our children and young people.
	More effective procurement can lead to direct cost savings for the agencies involved, as well as much wider social and economic benefits. That does not apply only to health. With the advent of bluetongue disease, which now covers most of southern England, a major role could be played by Government Departments, especially the Ministry of Defence and other major procurers of large quantities of meat products. If they were required to buy British meat, as opposed to importing it from other countries, that could have a significant impact on improving the lot of British farmers who are suffering all over the country.
	That brings me to our 32nd report on the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, where we looked at rights of access to open countryside. As a result of persistent questioning through our Committee when we met last November, we established for the first time that DEFRA budgets had been cut across the piece as a means of paying the fine that had been imposed as a result of the Rural Payments Agency fiasco. Although the amounts of money in relation to this particular programme were quite small—just over £1.1 million had been cut from that year's budget—it was the first time that I had been aware that the Treasury was seeking to resolve the payment of the fine by slicing budgets across its programmes. Harking back to the comment about who gets rewarded or suffers the consequences following failures within Departments, I remind hon. Members that not only civil servants get rewarded for abject failure, but Ministers too. The Secretary of State at DEFRA at the time of the RPA fiasco was subsequently promoted to Foreign Secretary.
	Our 19th report was entitled "A Foot on the Ladder: Low Cost Home Ownership Assistance". We discovered through our questioning that very little information had been available on the effectiveness of measures to encourage low-cost home ownership or on what happens after funds are deployed to help people to get their first foot on their housing ladder. That is another example of persistent questioning in our Committee encouraging officials to respond appropriately to the relevant criticisms that have been made. The Treasury minute in relation to our suggestions confirmed that it would accept most of our recommendations—for example, on measuring how many households had increased their proportion of ownership after the initial purchase of an interest in a shared equity mortgage property, on how often the purchase of a property through one of these schemes helps to free up social rented housing elsewhere in the locality, and on the effectiveness of the help provided to key workers in seeking to get them housed in areas close to where they work. The Government could also learn lessons from advice from other quarters on how to encourage home ownership. My hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Osborne) has made some significant proposals to abolish stamp duty, which would have a dramatic impact on encouraging first-time home ownership.
	The last report I shall touch on, which was referred to by others, is the 22nd of the Session, the tax credit report published on 9 May. We have been taking evidence on tax credits from the chairman of the Inland Revenue and it is clear from what he has told us that the whole edifice was originally constructed with a significant amount of error—I do not say fraud—in prospect. The Revenue's accounts have not been signed off by the Comptroller and Auditor General as a direct consequence of that programme, and the extensive fraud and error that it is not able to quantify. It is the case that 2.8 million people have either been overpaid or underpaid tax credits—32 per cent. of claimants as of the latest year end available, 2005-06.
	The chairman admitted that a high proportion of errors were designed into the scheme from the outset and I do not need to remind the House that it was the then Chancellor of the Exchequer who designed it. The chairman was unable to quantify precisely how many errors were anticipated but accepted that the complexity of the scheme meant that errors were likely, with individuals having to notify the Department of changes in circumstances each time that they happened.

Richard Bacon: On a point of clarification, or correction, the accounts were signed, but subject to a qualified opinion. What does my hon. Friend think that it says about the economy, effectiveness and efficiency of tax credits that some of the people who ought to benefit most from them have said, "I want nothing more to do with this, even if it means I'm financially less well off"? What kind of a welfare system evokes that response?

Philip Dunne: My hon. Friend, along with most other Members, will have had countless constituency cases where, as a result of some of the errors inherent in the system, some of the most vulnerable in our society have been encouraged to repay substantial amounts of money amounting to thousands of pounds. When such errors occur, it undoubtedly shakes the confidence of those individuals in the quality of our benefit system. It is no surprise to hear that some people would rather wash their hands of it.
	Another thing that came out of inquiries into tax credits was a lack of transparency in Government when introducing the scheme. The income disregard was increased in the 2005 Budget from £2,500 to £25,000, and at the time I recall that very little, if any, information was provided by the Treasury on the financial consequences of that. An overall number was put into the Red Book, which was an agglomeration of different aspects of the benefit changes involving tax credits, but that particular income disregard was never specifically quantified, and it was only as a result of persistent questioning by our Committee that the Treasury was prepared to come up with the estimated cost of the disregard, two years later. That is a sorry state of affairs, because it had clearly made the calculation but was not prepared to make it public at the time, presumably for reasons of political embarrassment. Again, that demonstrates the value of the Committee in holding not just Government to account, but their officers and organs.

Philip Hammond: This has been an interesting and useful debate, and I congratulate all hon. Members who have taken part. Through my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh), the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, I would like to congratulate the Committee on its valuable work. Increasingly, an important part of the scrutiny function of this House falls on the shoulders of the Committee, and it discharges that role extremely well. It will become a more significant role in the future as the effective and efficient delivery of public services moves to the centre stage of the political debate. The reports of my hon. Friend's Committee are essential reading for anyone aspiring to Government and who recognises that delivery is the key measure by which this Government and future Governments are judged by the electorate.
	The Committee has been instrumental in identifying billions of pounds of waste and inefficiency: £6 billion of tax credits overpaid because of complexity built into the system, with £500 million already written off and another £1.4 billion likely to be uncollectable; £500 million relating to the CSA project; £500 million wasted on the misuse of consultants; and as my hon. Friend made clear earlier, the Committee's eye is very much focused on the £9 billion Olympic budget, and the potential issues that may emerge there.
	My hon. Friend referred to the salutary effect that the prospect of appearing before the Committee can have on civil servants. I know from talking to civil servants in various Departments over the years that he is absolutely right. How often have any of us in conversation with a civil servant—at all sorts of levels—heard a reference to the possibility of having to appear before the PAC to account for something as a significant influence on the way that they conduct themselves? I hope that my hon. Friend and his Committee carry on holding civil servants and Ministers to account through that process.
	Perhaps we could consider for a moment the context within which the debate takes place. My hon. Friend referred to the comprehensive spending review, which delivers a significantly tighter settlement for the funding of public services than most Departments have enjoyed for a number of years. That throws into focus the agenda of safeguarding public services in this environment, and as my hon. Friend said, it means that everyone has to raise their game to ensure that we can continue to enjoy high quality public services in the face of tough spending limits.
	My hon. Friend did not actually refer to the CSR settlement as sharing the proceeds of growth, but that is exactly what it is. It comes at a time when there is an increasing awareness on all sides of the political debate that the public want increasing quantities of ever higher quality public services, but they also want tax, over time, to take a smaller proportion of our gross domestic product. That challenge goes right to the heart of the Committee's essential role in ensuring value for money and the best possible efficiency in delivering public services.
	However, there is another aspect to the debate to which my hon. Friend did not refer, but he could have done. As we live in an increasingly globalising economy, the need to maintain our international competitiveness will increasingly constrain the ability of Governments to go on raising an ever higher share of GDP in tax, even if they wish to, to fund public services. We have to address the desire for ever higher quality public services through the improvement of efficiency and better outcomes, rather than simply increasing the volume of inputs. In a situation where 40 per cent. of our GDP consists of publicly delivered services, falling public sector productivity drags down the overall performance of our economy and thus our international competitiveness.
	The challenge will be to deliver ever more with a given level of resource—something that may sound challenging, but the private sector has had to do it for years simply to survive, while delivering ever higher quality products and services at ever more competitive prices. This agenda puts a particular focus on the efficiency savings programme in Government. My hon. Friend rightly referred to the Committee's report on the shortcomings of the efficiency programme, in which the Committee identified bogus efficiency savings. The apparent efficiency was delivered only at the cost of a decrease in the quality of service—a reduction in inputs but a corresponding reduction in outputs—or, even worse, supposed efficiency was delivered only by not counting an additional input cost somewhere else.
	We welcome the possible role for the National Audit Office in reviewing Gershon savings on a Department-by-Department basis. It is clear from the Public Accounts Committee report that greater transparency in the Gershon process and independent audit of its results are needed.
	One or two overarching themes emerge both from the Committee's report and hon. Members' comments in this evening's debate. The key theme that struck me is capacity—whether the system has the capacity to deliver the complex, top-down solutions that Ministers prescribe from a political perspective. The impression that one gets from the debate is of a system that is overloaded with initiatives, which are increasingly complex and often require huge IT projects to enable their delivery. One also gets the impression that those who might say to their political masters, "This is not do-able; the system doesn't have the capacity; you're asking for too much, too quickly" are culturally inclined not to make such statements. I cannot say whether that reflects career judgments by individual civil servants or a deeper cultural malaise. There is also perhaps a bias towards always assuming the most favourable rather than the most likely outcome when planning ahead. That has led to a series of outright failures, some of which have been mentioned tonight, and a further series of on-going projects, which cannot be described as outright failures but suffer serious continuing problems, which, in many cases, look suspiciously like systemic problems that need resolving.
	I was encouraged by references by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough to some successful projects that the Committee had identified. It is vital that the Committee looks for the good as well as the bad and then focuses on the challenge of disseminating best practice across Government, and acquiring and disseminating best practice from the private sector. From my hon. Friend's comments and the balance in his speech between the good projects and those that have not been so successful, we might conclude that a pretty big challenge remains to ensure that lessons from successful projects are learned and disseminated effectively.
	Several hon. Members referred to the tension between what might be termed the delivery and the policy-making parts of Government. In an interesting exchange about the development of civil servants' careers, a suspicion arose that the policy-making part of Government continues to be perceived as the superior branch. Several hon. Members mentioned difficulties with leadership and accountability and the way in which sometimes nobody appears to be in charge of a project. I understand that the permanent secretary in the Department for Work and Pensions could not tell the Committee who was in charge of the CSA computer project. That echoes a comment that the Governor of the Bank of England made to the Treasury Committee a couple of weeks ago. When asked who was in charge at the time of Northern Rock, he asked whether Committee members would care to define what they meant by "in charge". Again, that is symptomatic of a cultural problem.
	Reference was made to the tendency to move civil servants around before projects were completed. That, again, is a facet of a culture whereby generalism is encouraged and regarded as vital to career development. I do not know whether my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough agrees, but there is a case for saying that, although the development of individuals' careers and the human resources policy of Departments are important, the overriding function of the delivery part of the civil service at senior level is safeguarding the public purse and the quality of outcomes for service consumers. There is a case for saying that the needs of career development must be subordinate to those of effective product delivery. I hope that the Committee will continue to press for that cultural shift in Government thinking.

Richard Bacon: Does my hon. Friend agree that there should not be a conflict between career development and successfully safeguarding the interests of the public purse? Major multinationals, such as Shell and BP, are interested in bringing on their people. The top management of such businesses tend to be the lifers—people who have been there for 20 or 30 years. They have experienced a huge spread of the business and successfully delivered a range of different projects, gaining different skills in the broader business.

Philip Hammond: My hon. Friend is right. I am not an expert in civil service human resources practices, but the problem to which he alludes is that people on a fast track, who are expected to go far, are moved between delivery and policy-making functions, and often do not stay with a project long enough and do not acquire a critical mass of experience and understanding in any specific matter. However, the point has been made and Committee members have demonstrated an awareness of and alertness to the issue. I hope that it will inform their overview of the position in Departments when things go wrong and, indeed, when they go right.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough specifically referred to the Olympics project—a large budget item, which rightly attracted the attention of the Committee because of the dramatic increase in its budget from what was originally envisaged. I encourage him to retain his Committee's close involvement with and interest in the project because there is a danger that the collective desire in the House and beyond for the London Olympics to be a great success may blind us to some of the risks in the delivery and may even discourage us from challenging and probing deeply some of the things that we are told.
	As I understand it, notwithstanding the huge £2.7 billion contingency allowance that is now built into the budget, it has not been allocated—at least not publicly—to different stages of the project. There is therefore no ability to determine whether the contingency fund is being used at a pace that is commensurate with delivery of the overall budget or whether it simply conceals an early stage overrun, even beyond what has been planned in the fund. I also understand that no monthly cash flow forecasts are available yet for public scrutiny to enable us to follow closely what is happening and how the budget is evolving. The whole House should be glad that my hon. Friend has fired a warning shot and that the PAC intends to keep a close eye on the project as it goes forward. We look forward to further reports from his Committee on the issue.
	The theme of getting the best out of contractors has also been mentioned by a number of hon. Members who have spoken. The concept of the intelligent client—a client who has the capability to define what he wants and the capacity to monitor the ability of a contractor to deliver it—is a critical part of the delivery of complex projects and will become ever more important as the model for the delivery of public services evolves and draws in ever more outside private sector suppliers. The CSA project was again cited as an example of how not to do it. Indeed, the PAC report pointed out that the Government did not rescind the contract with EDS in 2004 when they had the chance to do so.
	The Committee has noted that fully £8 billion of the savings that the Government expect to make in their efficiency programme comes from savings in the procurement of goods and services. Clearly a major initiative is required in that area, including a scheme to make the management of the private finance initiative more effective, through developing commercial skills and managing the pre-tender and tendering processes more effectively. That must be one of the major keys to delivering value for money in government in the future.
	A clear message is coming from this review of the Public Accounts Committee's reports that we are discussing, and it is one of multiple failings and lessons unlearned. As my hon. Friend said in his opening remarks, the Government must up their game. The Committee has identified some major projects in the pipeline where there is potential for further mishap. I hope that the Minister will respond positively to my hon. Friend's helpful analysis and encourage his Committee to continue to analyse what has gone wrong with projects in the past, what is going on with them now and where there is potential for problems to be averted by applying lessons in the future. On an optimistic note, we were all pleased to hear about the good examples, but we will be even more pleased to hear that there is evidence that those good examples have been rolled out.
	We were reminded in a timely way by my hon. Friend that value for money has two components—he did not quite put it like that, but that is what he was telling us. When his Committee was established all those years ago, I suspect that the focus was almost exclusively on protecting the taxpayer and ensuring that money was not misspent or wasted. However, in a modern, enabling government environment, there is also the interest of the consumer to be protected. We need to ensure that the consumers of public services receive the best possible quality services with the resource available to deliver them and that the taxpayer is protected against the unnecessary use of resource. The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) also reminded us that it is so often the most vulnerable consumers who suffer the most when things go wrong.
	I want to put one further thought to my hon. Friend, which is that we still focus far too much in our political debate on the inputs to public services and on the use of resources. We all do it; we all fall into that trap. Indeed, the Prime Minister did it last Wednesday at Prime Minister's Question Time, when instead of telling the House about the better outputs that he claimed had been achieved in the national health service, he chose to tell the House how many extra doctors and nurses had been taken on, and how many extra billions of pounds were being spent. I suggest to my hon. Friend that there is a need continually to remind politicians on all sides of the debate that outputs and outcomes matter to the public. We will never win the battle for better value for money and more efficiency in government if we fall into the trap of conducting the debate in terms of inputs. Indeed, if we conduct it in terms of inputs, improving efficiency could even appear to have a negative outcome. I hope that he and his Committee will bear that thought in mind in future reports.
	We all wish my hon. Friend and his Committee success in the vital task that they perform and will continue to perform. He finished his speech by giving the House a commitment that his Committee would continue with its eyes open, its collective head not averted and its tongue sharp when necessary. I would encourage him, and the Committee through him, to do just that, and to continue to develop its skill set and its focus, as the process of delivering public services continues to evolve and the role of the Committee necessarily evolves with it. I know that the Committee, under my hon. Friend's guidance and leadership, will continue to be a driver for a cultural change within government that is so necessary if we are to see the improvements in the efficiency, value for money and delivery of public services that are vital to making them sustainable, so that our children and our grandchildren can enjoy the same high quality public services that we expect to receive today.

Angela Eagle: It is my privilege to speak on behalf of the Government. I follow in the impressive footsteps of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government, who was clearly respected by all parties and was highly effective in his role. I do not know whether hon. Members noticed, but he could not keep himself away from our proceedings this evening and popped in to listen to the initial remarks of the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr. Leigh). Old habits, with him at least, die hard.
	Hon. Members who have checked my record of service in the House will know that I have served twice on the Public Accounts Committee: once in opposition and once as a Government Back Bencher. It is a great privilege, therefore, to find myself once more a member of the oldest and, I believe, most prestigious of Committees. The Public Accounts Committee has the crucial task of overseeing how more than £500 billion a year of public money is spent.
	The accounting officers' equally crucial role is to appear before the Committee to answer in public for how the organisations that they manage have discharged their duties, ensuring that taxpayers' money is spent efficiently and effectively, and that value for money is achieved. As the Committee's Chairman pointed out, some reports highlight successes and other highlight failures, but I believe that there are lessons to learn from all of them.
	As the Public Accounts Committee and the Government alike seek to improve public services, I am keen to ensure that the Government make the most of the opportunities that Public Accounts Committee hearings provide to reflect and to learn lessons. The success of the Public Accounts Committee's scrutiny owes a lot to the strong commitment within Parliament to its work, supported by the expertise of the National Audit Office and complemented by the significant investment of time that witnesses put in. It is in all our interests to ensure that the process is fully effective. I should like to offer my support by ensuring that my officials follow up and implement as far as possible the Committee's recommendations, and that we share what we have learned widely within the Government.
	The work of the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office—as independent, well-resourced bodies—ensures effective scrutiny and deepens democracy and accountability. I should like to thank both organisations for the work that they do. The NAO produces an impressive number of high quality reports on a broad range of subjects, and its remit has been made broader in recent times.
	Before I discuss general Government initiatives that might be of interest to the PAC, however, I will endeavour to address some of the contributions made in this absorbing debate.
	I must gently take issue with the Chairman's scepticism of the Government's record on efficiency savings. The 48th report developed a traffic light system whereby it categorised 26 per cent. of the £13.3 billion of efficiency savings as totally accurate, 51 per cent. as representing efficiency but carrying some measurement and uncertainty issues, and 23 per cent. as representing savings that were perhaps not really verifiable in a coherent manner. Only by putting the whole of the 51 per cent.—what I would call the amber area—into the red category can doubt be cast on 74 per cent. of the total, as the headline of the report does.
	The report acknowledges the difficulty of measuring with total accuracy projects that are not stand-alone initiatives. Indeed, it admits that some areas of programme efficiencies achieved might actually have been understated owing to weaknesses in departmental data systems and complex relations between inputs and outputs. Furthermore, the NAO report declares:
	"Projects across the programme are making significant improvements in the efficiency of public services."
	I look forward to working with the Committee on improving our data and measurement systems, but we should also give credit where credit is due as the largest and most complex efficiency programme ever undertaken in government proceeds.
	The hon. Member for Gainsborough also mentioned the NHS information technology programme. The programme has moved on a long way since the NAO produced its report and the PAC took its evidence. Without the programme, the NHS could no longer function, and it is already providing essential services and significant benefits to tens of thousands of clinicians and millions of patients. It is therefore a success story that ought to be acknowledged. For example, more than 5.5 million appointments have now been made using the choose and book system, representing 44 per cent. of first referrals. In addition, 397 million diagnostic images are now stored centrally, and 42 million electronic prescriptions have been used in a service that is now available in 41 per cent. of pharmacies and 47 per cent. of GP surgeries. Nearly 400,000 users are registered to use the NHS care records spine, with 45,000 NHS staff accessing it daily. National leadership has been strengthened by the appointment of a chief clinical officer and national clinical leads, and the programme proceeds.
	The hon. Gentleman made a point about primary care trusts, and I acknowledge that providing out-of-hours services has cost the trusts more than the Government anticipated. However, with improved commissioning, there is significant scope for reducing those costs in the future. In fact, the NAO report on out-of-hours services confirmed that we were on the right track to provide quality, round-the-clock out-of-hours services, and recognised that patients' experiences of the services were generally positive. Eight out of 10 patients were satisfied with the services, and six out of 10 rated them as excellent or good.
	My right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) mentioned two issues that he has mentioned before, as I have seen from reading some of the previous debates on PAC reports. I noted with interest that my advice to share with him bore remarkable similarity to advice that previous Ministers had been given on these occasions. On the issue of child obesity, and the question of whether the results of the national child measurement programme should be shared with parents, I know that the relevant Department is exploring and weighing all the options. My right hon. Friend will be aware that parents are being encouraged to inquire about the results, should they wish to do so, including through the provision of tear-off slips on the forms that they need to sign to give permission for the programme to proceed.
	On whether the BBC should fall within the auspices of the National Audit Office for accounting purposes, the Government's view is that the matter was decided as part of the charter review. The consultation that went along with that review demonstrated that the public did not want any increased power over the BBC to be given to either Parliament or the Government. Let me assure my right hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, West and Opposition Members that the NAO works very closely with the BBC Trust, and the BBC audit committee has close discussions to frame a programme of reviews, which it then undertakes. Members of the PAC then make it their duty to call the BBC to account. The reports are presented to Parliament in full and are looked at closely by the PAC.

Alan Williams: The consultation on whether the Government should have more power or influence over the BBC is utterly irrelevant. The National Audit Office has statutorily and deliberately been made completely independent of the Government. That is why it audits Government Departments. If there is a falling back on the basis of that evidence, it needs to be said that it is happening on the basis of no relevant evidence whatever.

Angela Eagle: I hear my right hon. Friend strongly and take note of what he says.
	The hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Julia Goldsworthy) has never sat on the Public Accounts Committee, but said how much she appreciated and understood the importance of its work. Clearly, so do we all. I take issue with her view that fixed payments in respect of tax credits might be a fairer way forward. It is not particularly fair for people whose income goes down in-year—they can lose out—and estimates suggest that about 700,000 people who did not have their tax credits reduced would lose out under a fixed payments system if their income fell. As with all such matters, there is a tension between simplification and having too blunt an instrument on the one hand and complication and a more finely tuned instrument on the other. The hon. Lady will understand that from her experience in her own advice surgeries.

Philip Hammond: The Minister is right about that tension. However, is not the message from our debate that we have to start from what is doable and recognise the limits of the system's capacity rather than design products or services that meet some theoretical requirement but cannot be delivered?

Angela Eagle: That is true, but equally the hon. Gentleman must recognise that fixed payments would make many people worse off. I do not underestimate problems with the tax credit system, but let us remember that it helps 20 million people and has lifted 600,000 children out of poverty. The figures show that 97 per cent. of those on the lowest income levels of below £10,000 a year claim this tax credit. If we compare it with its predecessor, family credit, we find that it is much more effective.

Julia Goldsworthy: Does the Minister agree that people on low incomes are most vulnerable to fluctuations in their income and that they are most likely to suffer if there is an overpayment, as their tax credits would suddenly be stopped?

Angela Eagle: Clearly, those who have less of a margin will suffer if problems occur, but it is equally the case that tax credits are more generous to those on lower incomes, so they provide a greater incentive for people to go into work. In my constituency surgeries, I have talked to many people who have been enabled to go back out to work and begin to earn a living by the extra help and assistance given by tax credits. As always, there are difficulties when systems go wrong, but the hon. Lady should not underestimate the amount of assistance that the tax credit system has given to many people. We must put these issues, important and difficult as they are, into perspective.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) has left the Chamber, but he is clearly enjoying serving on the Public Accounts Committee. As all of us who serve on the Committee realise, it is one of the most enjoyable, effective things that a Back Bencher can do—certainly, that was my experience as an Opposition Member and a Government Back Bencher. Even after the many years that my hon. Friend has been in the House, I am glad that he has finally appreciated the finer things that can come from membership of the Public Accounts Committee.
	My hon. Friend's comments about politicians being the problem, and civil servants not standing up to politicians, were interesting. My experience of the tension between policy and practical enforcement in government is not that civil servants do not stand up to politicians, or that politicians try to force civil servants to do things that are undeliverable. It is more subtle than that. As a Minister, I have had many a robust conversation with civil servants and much prefer to be told what is actually happening. If a measure is not seen to be practicable, any Minister worth their salt would want to know about it, and I have been involved in many discussions about the practicality of doing things. If things go wrong, however, the matter does not always come to light at an appropriate level to prevent disaster. As the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) said, the work done by the Public Accounts Committee demonstrates what can be done to ensure that such things do not go wrong systemically.
	The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond) and the Chairman of the Committee were right to refer to the fact that the Public Accounts Committee praises as well as damns. That is a good innovation, as it shows that there is a good way of doing things, which tends to reduce risks and increase the chances of major projects being delivered. If we simply take the worst cases—which the Committee is right to look at—we can go into a downward spiral of thinking that everything is bad, nothing works and nothing can ever be delivered on time. But we must also remember that a great deal of good change is delivered, day in, day out, by the public sector, central Government Departments and local government, without the great splurge of publicity that can happen when something goes badly wrong.
	The hon. Member for South Norfolk asked a series of questions. I suspect that the most important one was about Lorenzo software. I will investigate the matter and write to him about it, because I will not pretend that I have his oversight of that piece of detail. I am happy to consider what he has said and to do what I can to provide him with an answer.

Richard Bacon: May I ask the Minister to beware of snake oil salesmen who might try to divert her attention from what was originally contractually promised, as opposed to what is actually delivered? There are products out there that have been called Lorenzo, but which are effectively rebadged old software that predates the existence of the national programme.

Angela Eagle: If the hon. Gentleman is an expert on that snake oil, I am sure he will not be backward in coming forward to point out any sleight of hand in any of the responses that I have managed to produce for him. I shall be more than happy to talk to him about that in due course.
	The hon. Gentleman also raised some interesting points about the culture of the civil service, the way in which promotions are usually acquired, and the weaknesses that he feels that that inflicts on the ability to deliver on major projects. I like to think that the culture is changing, especially as a result of the strengthening of the power of the Office of Government Commerce and the increasing seriousness with which project delivery and change programmes are viewed, in the civil service in general and politically—with both a small and a large "p". The hon. Gentleman, however, clearly has his own observations to make about the effect that has been produced by that culture and that approach, as he has spent the last six years reading the reports that land on the Public Accounts Committee desk.
	The hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) made an interesting speech. He mentioned the Committee's 32nd report, on the right of access to open countryside, and DEFRA's problems with its budgets. In such circumstances, the Treasury would not see it as its role to decide on DEFRA's behalf which budgets should be top-sliced.
	If there are unfunded pressures in a Department, the usual approach is to leave the Department to deal with them unless or until a claim is made on the reserve. Only then will the Treasury become involved in the nitty-gritty of deciding whether the claim is justified. It certainly would not want to become involved in telling a Department how to deal with unfunded pressures within its own internal financial envelope. If any changes had come about as a result of that, DEFRA would have decided how to deal with them. Clearly, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the allocation of funds to Natural England had a direct effect on arrangements for access to the countryside.

Philip Dunne: I am grateful for that explanation. Does it mean that when an external event takes place such as a fining by the European Union, the Treasury will not take the initiative but will rely on each Department to submit an application?

Angela Eagle: No. It will obviously be aware of such events if they are due to happen.
	If an unfunded pressure of any sort was expected, there would be a dialogue with the Department concerned. However, if the Department then decided to make a claim on the reserve, the Treasury would make the decision. Although it might have suggestions to put to the Department, it would not insist that the Department do anything in particular about its unfunded pressures; that would be a matter for the Department. As I said earlier, it is a decision for the Treasury only if a claim is made for allocation to the contingency fund. Despite its reputation, the Treasury does not micro-manage every departmental budget.

Philip Dunne: Given that if a claim is made it is for the Treasury to decide whether to accept or reject it, was a claim made in this case and rejected by the Treasury?

Angela Eagle: The hon. Gentleman has the better of me. We are dealing with 40 reports, and I cannot give him a detailed answer to a specific question of that kind. However, I should be happy to find out whether I can discover the answer for him.
	The hon. Member for Gainsborough spent some time talking about the Olympics. The PAC recently initiated an interesting development in its scrutiny programme by conducting a hearing on preparations for the Olympic and Paralympic games, although of course the work has yet to be finished.
	More such hearings are planned. That approach was welcomed by the Opposition Front Bench. It is a new approach. The PAC and the National Audit Office are no doubt aware of the risk that their current involvement could somehow affect their objectivity when they later review the Olympic arrangements after the event, but it will be interesting to observe whether, and how, the approach will improve the Government's effectiveness in delivering the games.
	The Government look forward to staging the world's oldest and largest sporting festival as an event of which the entire nation can be proud. We intend to provide a fitting venue for a giant celebration of human capacity for achievement and diverse talent. Beyond that global celebration, we are determined to ensure that it brings significant and lasting benefit. Our goal is to leave real and valuable legacies. We want to make the UK a world-leading sports nation. We plan to transform east London. We must inspire our young people to take part in voluntary cultural and physical activity. We shall have an Olympic park that is a blueprint for sustainable development. If we do all that, the UK will be a shining light as a creative, welcoming and inclusive society—the vision that won us the bid in the first place.
	During its visit in June 2007, the International Olympic Committee co-ordination commission observed that good progress had been made and that the work was on track both operationally and financially. Its chairman stated:
	"we really consider London will be a model for future host cities of the Games".
	We intend to prove him right.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: I am sure that my hon. Friend will want to take this opportunity to congratulate the Olympic Delivery Authority on bringing in the first construction contracts on time and under budget. Those contracts are managed by a capable engineer, Howard Shiplee. Will my hon. Friend also commend our Government on introducing project bank accounts and project insurance in an attempt to control any overspend outside the control of the ODA, and to ensure that the construction companies involved get paid and we look after small and medium-sized enterprises as a result?

Angela Eagle: My hon. Friend is right, and it is nice to hear a contribution that celebrates our success in winning the games and is upbeat about our ability to deliver them. We already know that we are ahead of previous games in terms of preparation and planning, including in securing flows of private funding and sponsorship. Our public investment has generated private investment of about £1.5 billion in the Olympic village and £6 billion in Stratford.
	To respond to what the hon. Member for Gainsborough said about preparations, there is one body, and ultimately one individual, with overall responsibility for delivery, and beneath them there are clear reporting lines, as set out in the Treasury minutes. The Olympic board is overseeing preparations for the games. That is being co-chaired by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Olympics and the Mayor of London, and the Minister for the Olympics reports directly to the Prime Minister. It is also incorrect to state that strong monitoring and risk management arrangements are not in place. They have been explained in the Treasury minutes.
	I wish now to discuss broader Government initiatives by briefly addressing five areas that might be of interest to Members. On 9 October, the Chancellor announced in his comprehensive spending review plans that will release £30 billion for reinvestment. The next stage will be for Departments to publish value-for-money delivery agreements by the end of the year. That will set out publicly how they will achieve their value-for-money savings. From then on, they will report biannually on their performance to ensure that the public are informed of progress towards meeting the value-for-money targets. As the hon. Member for Gainsborough has called for breakdowns of departmental performance, I anticipate that he will be keen to read them. The Government welcome the National Audit Office's continued vigorous interest in scrutinising the process to ensure that it achieves its goals.
	A second area of great interest is the progress of the Government Department capability reviews. Fifteen Departments have already been reviewed, and the findings are published on the Cabinet Office website. We await with intense interest the results on the final two Departments: Revenue and Customs and my own Department, the Treasury. They should be published by winter 2008 at the latest. Furthermore, we are keen to ensure that this process has teeth, so once initial reviews are published, each Department has three follow-up board meetings to review progress against the findings.
	Thirdly, there are the Sharman orders. In response to Lord Sharman's report "Holding to Account", the Government announced that they would strengthen the statutory powers of the National Audit Office's Comptroller and Auditor General. Parliament has approved a number of orders to give the CAG statutory audit responsibility for non-departmental public bodies and special health authorities. Lord Sharman also recommended that the CAG become auditor of the non-departmental public bodies that have also been set up as companies, and he will become eligible to do so from the financial year 2008-09, once the Companies Act 2006 is in force. The Treasury is working closely with the NAO and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform—the successor to the Department of Trade and Industry—to ensure that the changes are implemented from April 2008, and to date 90 companies and subsidiary companies have been identified. When the powers are in place, the NAO will be able to offer Parliament a more comprehensive account of public business, so hon. Members will have a fuller picture of how public money is used.
	Fourthly, I commend to the House a short and readable new Treasury publication "Managing Public Money". It is now the Treasury's reference guide on standards and ethics in the use of public funds. Its predecessor, "Government Accounting", had been around for many years and was an essential tool for all parts of the public sector, but over time it had become too lengthy and unwieldy. The new publication is much shorter, and is drafted to set out the principles that need to be applied. It is important for everyone making decisions relating to the use of public resources to appreciate the high standards expected. Of particular interest to the House will be the guidance to officials on parliamentary and Treasury controls over public expenditure and the need for legislation to enable Government spending. Copies of "Managing Public Money" have been sent to the Library and to the relevant parliamentary Committees—and they are doubtless in fantastically high demand.
	I hope that the fifth initiative that I wish to explain will ease all our work in monetary scrutiny. On 3 July, the Prime Minister announced his goals for constitutional change and proposed that the Executive become more accountable to the public and Parliament through 12 reforms. In addition, the Government are committed to enabling the close scrutiny of public spending, for which reliable information is a prerequisite. We have a strong track record of improving financial management and transparency over the past decade, but in one area Parliament's task has been complicated by the ways in which records of public money have been formatted.
	Largely for historical reasons, we use different systems to set the control budgets, to present the annual estimates and to publish audited accounts. The accounts produced are all accurate and comply with their own reporting principles, but it is not easy, for instance, to compare planned expenditure with actual expenditure when using these systems. The differences between those outputs can cause confusion and inefficiency, so the task of parliamentary scrutiny of public spending is made more difficult than it need be.
	The Government have therefore put in place an alignment project. In practical terms that will involve substantial effort, but it will help us to progress in respect of the need for clarity, coherence, consistency and transparency, and therefore better accountability. The core part of the project is a better alignment of budgets, estimates and accounts, but it has wider implications. We will also be reviewing the frequency, format and terminology of all financial documents laid before Parliament. We aim to put changes in place by the end of the CSR 2007 period, subject to legislative requirements.
	The Government look forward to consulting Parliament to take that project forward, and will work closely with the Public Accounts Committee and the NAO on its detailed implementation. I hope and believe that it will be a welcome step towards making the various systems used to control and report on public spending easier to understand and more efficient to operate.
	Finally, many happy returns to the PAC, which is 150 years old. I do not know what the symbol is for 150th anniversaries, but perhaps in the case of the PAC it should be a magnifying glass. I have been looking at the records of some old debates. I found one from 102 years ago, in which it emerged that the Admiralty had spent nearly £500,000 without having signed a contract to do so. It seems that some things never change, despite all our best efforts. All of us who have been involved are proud of the way in which the PAC is constituted and does its job for Parliament. It provides an invaluable service to all of us, and I wish it a happy anniversary and many more years.

Edward Leigh: I thank the Exchequer Secretary for her kind words to the Committee. I thank all those who have taken part in the debate, especially the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), the Father of the House, who is a stalwart member of the Committee. I also thank him for laying to rest the canard that we are somehow trying to compromise the editorial independence of the BBC. There is no question of our trying to do that.
	I thank the spokesman for the Liberal party for her speech, and especially for reminding us of the accountability gap, which I have not heard expressed so clearly before. I also thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who brings a lot of life to our Committee. He made a fair point about civil servants. Certainly, in my brief inglorious career as a Minister I never encountered a compliant civil servant. It was more a question of "No, Minister" than "Yes, Minister". There is a serious point, however. We saw with the Rural Payments Agency saga that while the permanent secretary, Sir Brian Bender, had a close and continuing relationship with the Secretary of State, the project director did not. It is a question of officers and men, I think. Many project directors have a tenuous link with Ministers, and that is something that we need to address.
	I am grateful for the assiduity of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), and especially for his comments about the need for a single project director. We have gone back to the point again and again in these debates, but it needs underlining. For instance, for the Bowman project—a huge Ministry of Defence project—there was no senior responsible owner.
	I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne), who is a new member of the Committee, which reminds me to take up one more important point about where our systems often fail. As we saw with the NHS IT project, we often publish our report only for the Department to say that it has dealt with the problem. That is because we have shot ourselves in the foot, because our report has been so long delayed after the initial NAO report. I am trying to put pressure on the otherwise excellent NAO to try to speed up the process. It is because it is so careful that the process can take so long, but I want to see clearance speeded up. I say to Ministers and civil servants who read the report of this debate that there are often long delays between the NAO team finishing its investigation and its being allowed to publish its report. I want to see the process brought right up to the PAC hearing, so that we get up-to-date information. After the hearing, the NAO should write the draft report much more quickly, so that we can publish it. The whole process should be completed within three months, if possible, so that on the day that the PAC publishes its report we do not get the response from Ministers, as we frequently do, "Well, it's a very interesting report, but we've dealt with all those points." I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting that point.
	I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond), the shadow Chief Secretary, for his highly intelligent and thoughtful contribution. He reminded us that we are now committed to sharing the proceeds of growth. As a loyal member of the Conservative party, I accept that mantra, which has been put forward by our Front Benchers. It is not for me, as the Chairman of the PAC, to get involved in that debate now, but I am entitled to make the point that just a 2 per cent. efficiency saving every year would deliver £8 billion either for tax cuts or for more spending on essential public services. Our work is, therefore, right at the centre of the debate.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House takes note of the 9th, the 11th, the 13th to the 40th and the 43rd to the 45th Reports, and of the First Special Report from the Committee of Public Accounts, Session 2006-07, and of the Treasury Minutes thereon (Cm 7076, 7077,7151, 7152, 7216).

PETITIONS

Sefton Coastal Woods

Claire Curtis-Thomas: It gives me great pleasure to present this public petition to the House this evening.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of the "Sefton Coast Watch Committee".
	Declares the Petitioners' serious concerns over the past ten years with the plans of the organisation presently known as Natural England to clear fell in total 75 hectares, ie almost one quarter of the 302 hectares of woodland which make up the Sefton Coastal Woods. These woods are a precious red squirrel refuge and a delight to the 700,000 visitors annually, mainly from Merseyside. They also help to neutralise raised carbon emissions from global warming. This represents 5,000 local residents within the borough of Sefton and supports the unanimous vote of Sefton councillors on 4th March 2004.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to initiate a Judicial review or some other unbiased Parliamentary legal investigation; so that the correct interpretation of the National and European Conservation legislation may be clearly determined. We request that this should happen before Natural England is granted any further licence to clear fell and destroy more of an already existing red squirrel woodland habitat.
	And the petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Rachel Pullen

John Hemming: I wish to present to the House a petition that raises an interesting case.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of The Pullen Family
	Declares that a recent case in the Family Court has highlighted an injustice in the current system. The daughter of Rachel Pullen has been put up for adoption because she is alleged, by Nottingham City Council, to be too ill for her mother to care for her. The Council assessed Rachel Pullen as "not having the capacity to give instructions to your solicitor". As a consequence the Official Solicitor was instructed to represent her. This case demonstrates that there is a conflict of interest under current legislation which works against the interests of parents. The petitioners believe that judgements on an individual's competence should be made by a fully independent authority to ensure justice is both done and seen to be done.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to legislate to prevent courts from accepting the opinion of experts paid by the local authority as to the capacity of parties to give instructions to solicitors and further to investigate on how many occasions the Official Solicitor has been used by Local Authorities to progress the removal and adoption of a child from its birth family.
	And the Petitioner remains, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

SCHOOLS (BERWICK-UPON-TWEED)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Watts.]

Alan Beith: This debate is about school building and reorganisation in the Berwick-upon-Tweed constituency, which is a large one, covering more than 1,000 square miles, in an enormous county with a small population. Some of the schools are within a few miles of Ashington, such as Lynemouth, Ellington and Linton; others, such as Cambo, are not far from Newcastle airport and others are closer to Edinburgh than to Tyneside, including those in Berwick-upon-Tweed, and are the northernmost schools in England in the Minister's jurisdiction. I am glad that the Minister for Schools and Learners, the hon. Member for South Dorset (Jim Knight), who takes an interest in our problems in Northumberland, is in the Chamber to answer the debate.
	The size of the area means that it is expensive to provide education there. A larger number of schools, including many village first schools, is needed because of the travel distances involved. Transport costs are high and statutory transport requirements take a significant slice of the budget, even though the county now charges pupils aged over 16 heavily; it costs them £360 to travel to school or college—an issue I have raised on other occasions.
	However, to deal with such expensive requirements Northumberland receives less money than most other authorities; only four authorities in England have less funding per pupil. In the current year, Northumberland has £3,552 per pupil against the England average of £3,888. Of course, some areas are well above that average, but in Northumberland the costs and pressures are high. On the other side of the border, funding is hugely better in Scotland, which is particularly apparent to my constituents given where they live.
	An added problem—not on the same scale but worrying none the less—arises from the Government's plans, announced earlier this year, to take so-called surplus cash from schools. The amount could be as much as £225 million over the whole country, some of which may already have been spent, because nowadays schools need to conserve money in their budgets for repairs and other commitments, or save money one year for a new project in the following year. The policy is based on assumptions that are not well founded and it could be damaging.
	In the 2004 Budget, the Prime Minister—then the Chancellor—said that he would ensure
	"for every constituency in the country that by 2015, every secondary school can be refurbished or rebuilt with world-class technology in every school".—[ Official Report, 17 March 2004; Vol. 419, c. 335.]
	I sat up with a start when I heard those words. I counted up the schools in my constituency and wondered how the policy would be delivered in Berwick-upon-Tweed.
	I am still asking how that promise will apply in my constituency, where as well as three high schools we have many old first and middle schools that require refurbishment or rebuilding. Some of our schools date from the 1870s, although they are among the better built ones and when refurbished some of them are very good. Many of the schools were built just after the Education Act 1944. Some date from the 1950s and a lot from the 1960s—they are generally the worst, as some were deliberately built with only a 25-year life span and have been patched together since.
	The then Chancellor made his promise about secondary schools, although for many purposes middle schools count as secondary schools, too. However, I shall concentrate on two high schools. Coquet school in Amble is the most recently built of our high schools and the only one that was built for the age group it serves—the three-tier system to which I shall refer in more detail. Although the school has some problems, they do not compare with those at the other high schools in my constituency, at Berwick and Alnwick.
	Most of the buildings at Berwick community high school are old and outdated, although some are more recent. They were built for a style of teaching that is no longer practised. The teaching approach was very different 50 years ago and was based on children sitting in rows, facing the front. The school had serious, unexpected problems with its boiler, which is exactly why schools need reserves in their budget. The buildings are not compliant with the Disability Discrimination Act 2005 and some of them cannot be made so.
	The state of the buildings is shown in sharp relief when we look just a few miles away to Duns and Eyemouth where £50 million to £75 million has been spent on new schools. No parent from Berwick can send their children to those schools, because they are on the other side of the border which, educationally, is something of an iron curtain. There are very few ways to cross the border educationally, but my constituents look over it and see heavy spending on the schools on the other side that their schools do not share.
	The worst problems for high schools are faced by the Duchess's community high school in Alnwick where the main buildings are old and declining. They have passed the end of their useful life and there is a severe capacity problem. The school was built for 900 pupils, but now has 1,150 on a split site. The dining hall seats only 200 children, but more than 1,000 children have to use it during the lunch break. That means that there are numerous sittings and that pupils have to be pushed out quickly so that the next lot can get in. That is an impossible situation.
	According to the fire certificate, the assembly hall can fit only 300 pupils, but that is not even enough to hold the sixth form for sixth-form assemblies. I am very familiar with the room, because on most of the occasions on which I have been elected to the House the votes have been counted in the high school hall. That happened in my very first election, but even the elections have now moved on. They now take place in the much more spacious, comfortable and attractive leisure centre on the other side of town. However, the school is still condemned to use its very constricted hall. There are only eight science labs for 13 science staff; 13 mobile classrooms in a state of disrepair; and heating problems.
	Then we have the problems of the Bailiffgate site, which is an old building some distance away from the main school. Getting to it involves crossing a road, and it is on four floors with narrow staircases. It is essentially an old domestic property across the road from Alnwick castle, and it does not have sound-proofed music rooms. Despite the quality of the musical effort at the Duchess's high school, that is not always appreciated by people trying to do other work in the same building. It is impossible for the building to comply with the Disability Discrimination Act and timetables have to be rewritten to accommodate pupils with mobility problems so that they can stay on the ground floor. We certainly cannot get 21st century best practice for learning environments given the constraints of the buildings.
	It is impossible to make any progress in reducing the carbon cost of the school. It still uses a coal-fired boiler and the buildings are very draughty. Because of the use of a split site, one hour per pupil teaching time is lost every week because of movement between the sites. The school has been made as safe as it can be, but there are still serious issues of safety.
	In 2003, Ofsted drew attention to the difficulties caused by the buildings, particularly the Bailiffgate annexe. In its report, the inspectors gave a list of things that the school should do and one was to
	"Improve the accommodation available by vigorously pursuing the ongoing review of the replacement or refurbishment of the Bailiffgate site."
	The school has vigorously pursued that, but there has still been no progress.
	Ofsted inspected the school again last week, so obviously I do not know what it will say this time. However, I will be surprised if it does not commend the school on the very good progress that it has made. I expect some positive features in the report, but I will be equally surprised if the report does not contain condemnation of the school's buildings and an indication that they are just not fit for purpose. Parents are very exercised by the problem. A recent parents' questionnaire attracted 400 replies and by far and away the main concern expressed was about the buildings.
	As if those problems were not enough, Northumberland is attempting a massive schools reorganisation—from a three-tier to a two-tier system. We have middle schools for nine to 13-year-olds, first schools for five to nine-year-olds, and high schools for 13 to 18-year-olds. The system dates from when the county went comprehensive in stages from the 1970s and it was chosen partly because the most modern buildings that the county had at that time were the secondary modern and technical schools that were built in the aftermath of the Education Act 1944. The reorganisation was largely designed to fit the buildings, but of course those buildings are now very old. The county wants to change things partly to address the sheer number of schools, and the surplus places problem, but the change is controversial and gives rise to a great deal of concern. Educationally, however, the county has another motive. Northumberland is in the top 5 per cent. for key stage 1, but is only average for key stage 2. Pupils transfer in the middle of key stage 2 and again in the middle of key stage 3. That is a system that very few authorities now use.
	Strong arguments are advanced against the change from three to two tiers. The proposal is particularly controversial in rural areas where the middle school is the only school within quite a large area. If middle schools cease to take nine to 13-year-olds, children would be completely outside their rural area from the age of 11. The issue applies to the middle schools in Wooler, Rothbury, Belford, and Seahouses, and to other parts of Northumberland outside my constituency, such as Bellingham and Allendale.
	Many parents and teachers in all kinds of areas think that middle schools have positive value. Both my children went through the system, and middle school was a particularly happy time for them. It is a time in which children acquire more responsibility, and they feel that they are taking a responsible role as they get to the top of the school. That has to be balanced against some of the problems arising from transfer at that age, and the short time that pupils then have in which to prepare for GCSE.
	Whatever view one takes of the reorganisation, it will clearly be difficult to achieve unless there is capital for school building. Indeed, we must question whether it can be done at all, even through the phased approach that the county is taking, without substantial extra resources. It will cost money, and it means a lot of school building. Obviously, it is intended that some of the school building will be funded through property deals—by the release of sites. However, the reorganisation should not be shaped by the saleability of sites. That process cannot fund more than a part of what will be required, and it would be distorting if the pattern of reorganisation came to depend on which sites could be sold to release money for new schools to be built.
	Against that background, the county's hope lay in the Building Schools for the Future programme, yet at every stage Northumberland found itself at the back of the queue. It is currently in wave 13 of that programme. Why? That is what I keep asking. The Minister came to a meeting that we held in Woodhorn. There were many interesting people round the table—people from the schools, including pupils, and people from the authority. They asked him a lot of questions, and the questions that we keep asking him is, how does that decision come about? What is wrong? Is the Department making the wrong assessments, or is there something wrong with the bids that Northumberland puts forward?
	If you apply for a job these days, Madam Deputy Speaker, you expect to get some feedback if you do not get the job. I am not suggesting that you are applying for any jobs yourself, but you will know of the process. When people bid for a lottery grant or something like that, best practice now is to give them feedback to tell them in what ways their bid was on the wrong lines, or how they can improve it so that they stand a better chance in future. I do not think that Northumberland has ever had that. I have asked repeatedly for that to be done, so that we can have some understanding of why an authority with such obvious needs is constantly at the back of the queue.
	The result is that Northumberland has had to fund school developments without BSF help. It has committed nearly £28 million to the reorganisation in the Cramlington area, and £26.5 million towards the £54 million programme in Blyth. Incidentally, both of those projects are outside my constituency. All of that heavy capital expenditure is going to the south-east of the county, and not to any part of the area that I have described in my constituency.
	The county has looked into whether academies provide a suitable route. It has followed that route, very controversially, in Ashington and Blyth. In both places, there are huge local arguments about whether the county should be doing that at all. The issue is not just about the principle of academies, but about what the effect will be on schools that the authority has already provided in those areas. However, those are not the problems for tonight. Alnwick, which the county was interested in as a site for an academy, did not meet the criteria, despite having a highly deprived ward directly adjoining the current site of the Duchess's community high school. The academy project went to Ashington and not to Alnwick.
	Given the fact that the academy route has not worked and that Building Schools for the Future has not worked for Northumberland, how is the Government's declared objective and the Prime Minister's declared objective of rebuilding and refurbishing all secondary schools to be realised in my constituency? I ask the Minister to consider some of the things that he might do. The first is to be ready to support Northumberland over the replacement of the Duchess's school in Alnwick. There are many people in Alnwick who say to me, "When is the Schools Minister going to come up and visit Alnwick? He said that he would do so, to come and look at the Duchess's school."
	People have pinned a great deal of hope and responsibility on the Minister, and he should do what he can to assist and support Northumberland in dealing with an urgent problem, the replacement of the Duchess's high school. A lot of negotiation has been going on, particularly with the castle estates, which are the principal landowners in the area, but it remains a difficult process for which significant capital funding will have to be found. I want the Minister to take a personal interest in that, as he has already indicated willingness to do so.
	I pose the question, not out of particular enthusiasm for such a scheme, whether the academy route might be explored for Berwick, bearing in mind a number of special circumstances there. There are deprived wards directly adjoining the location of the school, which are among the 10 per cent. of wards with the highest degree of deprivation. Berwick is also a special case because of its rural character and the area that it serves. It is a special case because there is no parental choice in Berwick, and there is no prospect of parental choice.
	The only parental choice is for those who can afford to send their children to the one private school in the area, Longridge Towers. There is no parental choice within the state sector because the nearest school to which parents are allowed to send their child is in Alnwick, 30 miles away. I have just explained what difficulties are faced there. There is no other school. The schools that are 8 miles and 12 miles away are in Scotland, and the border is an absolute barrier. The Scottish system is different, with transfer at a different age. That, too, makes Berwick a special case.
	There are opportunities to involve further and higher education in Berwick, which are seriously underprovided there. Getting anyone to undertake further education in Berwick is extremely difficult. Huge travel is involved. We have had major arguments about the denial of rail travel for the long, long journey to Newcastle. Edinburgh is nearer, but that is excluded for most purposes by the border. There are real possibilities with Northumbria university and other potential providers. There are even possibilities of co-operation with the private sector in education, which make Berwick a potential special case. It is worth considering whether the academy route is possible for Berwick, despite it not obviously fitting the criteria that have been applied in some other places.
	I should like the Minister to look carefully at slippage in the Building Schools for the Future programme. We know that there has been significant slippage. Indeed, the Department's memorandum to the Education and Skills Committee in its report on sustainable schools stated:
	"There has been significant slippage in BSF projects in waves 1-3, with the majority of projects behind the ideal project timelines."
	The memo went on to identify some of the problems that authorities encountered, many of which are problems that Northumberland knows how to deal with. Northumberland could meet many of the requirements and has already shown its ability to do so and its willingness to commit its own resources to seeing through major projects. I should like the Minister to consider a bid from Northumberland to use what I refer to as slippage money—money that it is not currently possible to spend on some of the planned schemes—to deliver in earlier waves of Building Schools for the Future. Northumberland could act and could deliver.
	I have repeatedly made the request that the Minister talk to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government about the funding formula. The Chancellor says that he is making more money available for education than was previously proposed. Unless something is done, all that will do is ratchet things upwards while preserving the huge inequality between Northumberland and many other parts of the country. I would like the Minister to pass on to his colleagues at the Department for Communities and Local Government, to whom we also make the same points, that the funding formula when applied to education seems to have particularly unjust effects in Northumberland and makes it difficult for the county to meet its obligations on so difficult an issue.
	In 2006, the Prime Minister, who was then Chancellor, spoke in his Budget statement about raising investment in state schools so that instead of it being £5,000 per pupil, it went up to the £8,000-per-pupil average of the private sector. I do not think that we are anywhere near that figure; I am not sure how the calculations are made, but I am sure that we are short of it. Again, mechanisms will have to be used to overcome the difficulties that I have described if the Prime Minister's declared objective is to be achieved in the constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed.
	I have laid out the problems that arise from Northumberland's character and size, the issues of reorganisation and the age of its schools. I have suggested things that the Minister can do to support the moves to replace the Duchess's community high school in Alnwick and to consider how to get not only a new high school but a much broader range of education provision in Berwick. I have also suggested that slippage in the Building Schools for the Future programme might present an opportunity and that the funding formula should be considered again. I look forward to the Minister's response.

Jim Knight: I congratulate the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) on securing this debate and on the excellent way in which he put forward his argument—not quite as excellent as Arsenal's 7-0 victory this evening at the Emirates stadium, but almost as good.
	As the right hon. Gentleman said, I had the pleasure of visiting his constituency 12 months ago. I enjoyed the meeting at Woodhorn and remember hearing from his constituents—those from Alnwick in particular—a rehearsal of the debate around reorganisation, which I observed with interest, but in a slightly detached way given that reorganisation issues are for the local authority, not me, to determine.
	I accord with the right hon. Gentleman's analysis of the two-tier and three-tier systems; there are merits in both. My daughter was educated in the middle-school system and my son largely in the two-tier system, and I am proud of both their educational achievements. Both systems can work well. On my visit, I saw some of the excellent work done in the region of the right hon. Gentleman's constituency and his great concern for the standards of education there and in the north-east in general.
	The Government have made a commitment to creating school buildings fit for 21st century teaching and learning. Given the shoddy state of schools that we inherited, that was more akin to climbing up a mountain than strolling gently up a hill. However, the scale of the challenge means that we can be rightly proud to be delivering on it. We made that bold commitment because we want to provide a genuine opportunity for every child, overcoming attainment gaps and eradicating child poverty, ensuring that outcomes are determined by talent and hard work, and building a fair society and a culture that celebrates success.
	We also made the commitment because we want every pupil to get a personalised education, responsive to their individual needs and supportive of their individual talents. We want to give each child the best possible start in life by giving them the skills that they need to thrive in the modern world, to live happy and successful lives and to fulfil their potential. A good education depends on many things: teachers, parents, standards and discipline. We need to improve all of those—and we are improving them.
	However, well designed buildings, and good facilities where young people can learn and grow, are a vital foundation, so I understand the right hon. Gentleman's frustration as he waits. A well designed school can make a difference in simple but vital ways, as well as providing the right facilities for teaching and learning: imaginatively designed dining halls—hopefully larger than those he described—can encourage healthy eating; wider corridors can cut bullying; and classrooms with natural lighting and fresh air can help pupils' concentration and behaviour. Dark, dingy and decrepit buildings need to be condemned to the past, where they belong.
	Over the past 10 years, we have increased investment year by year, and we are seeing the fruits of that investment in the transformation of school buildings across the country. The shoddy, make-do buildings that we inherited are now, in so many places, a thing of the past. Over the past 10 years, we have built more than 1,100 schools and a further 27,000 new or improved classrooms, as well as 6,600 new or improved laboratories. A total of 2,450 schools have better sports facilities and 2,300 have new or improved kitchens. In the Berwick-upon-Tweed area of Northumberland, about a dozen kitchens and serveries have been refurbished in recent years, and two new science labs have been built, as well as a new assembly hall and a whole new school.
	However, the scale of the task has meant that we have not been able to do everything at once. This is as true for Governments as it is for local authorities. We have made a start. We have struck a balance between ensuring that every school has some investment and tackling the worst school buildings. For instance, there are now no schools that have to rely on outside toilets. In our major strategic programmes, such as Building Schools for the Future, we have concentrated on those who most need it as determined by levels of deprivation and educational attainment. I am sorry if the right hon. Gentleman does not feel that he has had proper feedback, but that was the foundation of the assessment that we made and the basis on which we asked local authorities to make applications for Building Schools for the Future money. If his constituents need an explanation as to why certain areas have been allocated on a certain basis, it is the combination of our priority in respect of levels of deprivation and educational attainment and how local authorities have then responded to those priorities in their applications.

Alan Beith: Why has none of Northumberland's bids been successful, even though it has plenty of instances of deprivation and some instances of lower attainment than should be achieved?

Jim Knight: The other piece of the jigsaw thatI should mention is that there needs to be sufficient scale to construct a cost-effective procurement model. Without knowing the exact detail of the situation in Northumberland, it may be that it could do it in two waves rather than one. The procurement model would have to be got right. Some of the larger authorities can do it in several stages and some of their waves have been split accordingly, with some earlier and some later.
	We are now moving ahead. Over the next 15 years or so, we aim to rebuild or refurbish all secondary schools and at least half of all primary schools. Earlier this month, I announced £21.9 billion of capital investment allocations to local authorities to raise standards with state-of-the-art arts, sports and information and communications technology facilities. Our capital investment will mean that by the end of this latest spending period, there will have been a sevenfold increase in investment in real terms since 1997. We will shortly make a revenue allocation announcement.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about the clawback of balances. We are consulting on that, and no decision has been made to do it. The consultation closes this Friday, and I will look to make decisions and announcements quickly, certainly in respect of some aspects. People have raised concerns particularly about the retrospective nature of some of the proposals that we consulted on, and I would like to provide some certainty on that as quickly as I possibly can, because I know that it is causing concern to schools throughout the country. I have some sympathy in respect of revenue, which is not really the subject of this debate, because I represent a Dorset constituency which also does not have one of the best-funded authorities in the country. Although we will not be able to put everything right in one fell swoop, I hope that we will be able to make some progress when we make the revenue announcement.
	As part of our capital funding, we are kick-starting the primary capital programme to rebuild or refurbish half the primary schools in England, with £1.9 billion over the next three years, and we are putting another £9.3 billion into Building Schools for the Future, including academies, to revamp secondary schools. By 2011, 200 new, rebuilt or revamped secondary schools will be opening every year. We are continuing to strike a balance to make substantial funding available for councils not yet in the Building Schools for the Future programme, such as Northumberland, for special educational needs pupils and for 14 to 19 diplomas, providing more money for school kitchens, and with £3 billion devolved straight to schools and over £4.5 billion devolved to councils.
	We will continue to provide funding direct to every school to spend on buildings and ICT as they see fit. Schools that have not yet been modernised will receive a higher rate, with modernised schools receiving a standard rate, which means that the Berwick high school in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency will receive funding at the higher rate. I am advised that it will get £90,000 and that the Duchess's community school that he talked about will receive £126,000.
	How the funding devolved to local authorities is invested is for each local authority to determine, not for us sitting in Whitehall. We have given local authorities centre stage with new powers and duties so that they can be the strategic leaders of education in their area and the champions of parents and pupils because they know best what is most needed in their regions and who can best deliver that service. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman is continuing to lobby his friends at county hall. We will look to local authorities to focus on the key priorities, to raise standards in the classroom and to ensure that all children have the opportunity to reach their full potential, because that is what most concerns parents.
	Northumberland will receive its share of funding, with £65 million allocated for capital over the three-year period, including more than £8 million for the primary capital programme. That comes on top of the £41 million that Northumberland received in the last spending review period. It is worth noting the 50 per cent. increase in funding that the county has been allocated over the spending period. In 2010-11 alone, Northumberland will receive £27 million, which compares to just over £3 million that it received in 1996-97. How all that money is invested is a matter of local decision making to support both local and national priorities. As I have said before, even with the amount of money in question, sometimes difficult choices will still have to be made.
	The right hon. Gentleman asked about Berwick and the potential for the high school to become an academy. At the moment it does not technically meet the criteria for consideration as an academy, as he said. However, given the rural nature of its catchment area, its isolation from other schools, and the points he has raised, if a scheme is put forward with a sponsor and so on, I will look as sympathetically as I can within the constraints I am under to see whether we can extend support to it.
	The right hon. Gentleman also mentioned Alnwick. I am advised that the council remains committed to delivering a solution to organisational and building issues in the town. Perhaps there is a combination of capital receipts that the council can realise in the medium term that it can then invest in resolving some of the issues. I will take an interest in the matter—the right hon. Gentleman consistently raises it with me. I still intend to visit Northumberland again during the next few months. I have not decided on the final programme because all sorts of people want me to visit all sorts of things, but I will not forget that I made a commitment to visit the Duchess's school, and if I possibly can, I will do so when I am in the area.
	We already have some 72 local authorities in waves 1 to 6 of BSF, which were prioritised on educational and social need. Northumberland local authority is currently prioritised in the later waves of BSF, as we have heard.
	We have already announced that all authorities with projects in wave 7 onwards will be given the opportunity to revise their expression of interest in inclusion in the programme. That may include the way in which they group their schools. Earlier, I talked about the waves and whether it is possible for regrouping to be done in four or five waves that would deal more acutely with the sorts of things that have been described. We aim shortly to consult on the process and on proposals for the management of the later stages of the programme. That will be informed by the lessons learned from the early waves to ensure that the programme delivers to plan, avoiding the sort of slippage that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, and benefits all authorities. It will come as no surprise that the key criterion that emerges from the later waves is authorities' readiness to deliver.
	With the right vision and plan, authorities can put themselves in a good position to enter the programme from 2011 when we aim to launch wave 7. I would certainly encourage all authorities to do so and encourage the right hon. Gentleman to continue his discussion with Northumberland. I do not doubt that Northumberland can make a strong case. Indeed, I am advised that it is keen to re-present its case on Building Schools for the Future.
	I take the opportunity to put it on the record that the mischievous reporting 10 days ago in  The Sunday Telegraph and the  News of the World that the review is a prelude to axing BSF is false. Indeed, I hope that the process will allow us quickly to allocate any future slippage to new areas. However, we naturally anticipate that if local authorities, contractors and the Government learn from our experience, any slippage will be minimised if not negligible.
	We have already refurbished thousands of schools throughout the country, but that is only a start. In the next 15 years, we are committed to going even further to ensure that our children and young people have the best possible learning environment, with inspiring new buildings and integrated technology instead of the cramped classrooms, peeling paint and outside loos that they had to suffer for decades under the Conservative Government. That is good news for teachers, parents and communities throughout the country, including those in the right hon. Gentleman's constituency.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at five minutes to Ten o'clock.